


LAND AND ITS RENT 



W I 7 FRANC I S A. WALKER 

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DEPARTMENT OF STATE. 



Alcove, 
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LAND 



AND 



ITS RENT. 



BY 



}v^,^ '' 



FRANCIS A. WALKER, Ph.D., LL.D., 

PRESIDENT OP THE MASSACHUSETTS ESTSTITUTE OP TECHNOLOGY; AUTHOR OP 

"the WAGES QUESTION;" " MONEY ; " " MONEY, TRADE, AND 

industry;" POLITICAL ECONOMY:" ETC. 



BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 

1883. 



!C >^ 



H3^^i 



(0 



/•' 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, 

By Little, Beown, and Company, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Camfiritfse *♦ 

PRINTED BY JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
UNIVERSITY PRESS. 



PEEFACE. 



^ I ^HIS volume contains the substance of four 
lectures, delivered in Harvard University 
in May, 1883. The lecture-form, and also, 
so far as possible, the lecture-tone, have been 
dropped in preparing the work for the press, 
while some matters of detail have been added, 
which neither time nor the conditions of oral 
delivery allowed to be introduced on the former 
occasion. 

The author is aware that he is regarded by 
his American brethren as somewhat heretical 
in the view he takes of the relations of wages 
to the interest of capital and to the profits of 
business management, which view may be 
summed up in two propositions, namely: — 



iv PREFACE. 

1st. Under perfect competition, the laborer 
would become the residual claimant upon the 
product of industry ,1 the amount to be deducted 
on account of rent, interest, and business profits 
being subject to definite principles, and, conse- 
quently, all gains in productive power would, 
upon this condition, inure directly to the benefit 
of the laborer. 2d. With imperfect and unequal 
competition, the economic harmonies do not pre- 
vail, the laborer surely losing his interest if he 
does not himself seek his interest. All economic 
injuries inflicted in the distribution of wealth 
tend, moreover, to abide and to deepen, while 
industrial society itself, as a whole, suffers in 
the ultimate result, through the reaction of dis- 
tribution upon production. 

But while the author of the present treatise 
thus fails to satisfy the requirements of eco- 
nomic orthodoxy, in regard to the relation of 
wages to the interest of capital and to the prof- 
its of business management, he is, in his view 

1 For tlie elaboration of tliis proposition, the author would 
refer to pp. 265, 266, of his Political Economy. 



PEEFACE. V 

of tlie origin of rent and its influence upon 
the distribution of wealth, a Eicardian of the 
Eicardians, holding that the great thinker who 
has given his name to the economic doctrine of 
rent left little for those who should follow him 
to do ; and that any wide departure from the 
lines laid down by him can only result in con- 
fusion and error. 

The author is well aware that the tone of his 
allusions to Frederic Bastiat will grieve many 
of the American admirers of that most ingeni- 
ous, eloquent, and sentimental essayist ; but it 
seems full time that the plain truth regarding 
Bastiat's theory of value, whether as applied 
to land or to commercial products, should be 
spoken out on this side the water, as it was 
long ago, in England, by Professor Cairnes. In 
his power of raillery and sarcasm, in the gracious 
charm of his narrative, in the purity and ear- 
nestness of his philanthropic purpose, Bastiat 
cannot sufficiently be admired; but as a con- 
structive economist he made a dead failure, 
while his views regarding the land are espe- 
cially erroneous. 



Vi PREFACE. 

For the spirit in whicli he discusses the views 
of a writer who deliberately proposes that Gov- 
ernment shall confiscate the entire value of 
landed property, without compensation to those 
who, under the express sanction and encourage- 
ment of Government itself, have inherited or 
bought their estates, the author has no apol- 
ogy to offer. Every honest man will resent 
such a proposition as an insult. 

Boston, October, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



o 

Chapter Page 

I. The Economic Doctrine of Rent . 5 
II. Attacks upon the Doctrine of 

Rent 57 

III. Recent Attacks upon Landed Prop- 

erty 121 

IV. The Best Holding of the Land . 183 

Index 221 



3 



-n 






LAND AND ITS EENT. 



CHAPTEE I 

THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 

^ I ^HE immediate reason for the publication 
-■- of this work is found in the course of 
economic discussion during the few months 
now passing. Altogether unexpectedly, and, 
so far as one can see, without any cause exist- 
ing in the economic relations of society, the 
questions of the rightfulness and the expe- 
diency of private property in land, and of the 
influence of rent upon the distribution of wealth, 
have been precipitated upon us, almost as if 
they were new questions. Whatever may be 
true of France and Germany, it must be said 
that never in England has the discussion of the 
equities and the economics of landed property 
been so active and earnest as now; while in 
the United States, where practically, the ques- 



b LAND AND ITS EENT. 

tion of the private ownership of the soil has 
not heretofore even been raised, we find popu- 
lar attention bestowed in a remarkable degree 
upon a book, now perhaps in its hundredth 
edition, the fundamental proposition of which 
is that " the recognition of exclusive property 
in land is necessarily a denial of the right of 
property in the products of labor," and whose 
practical proposals embrace the virtual abolition 
of private property in land through the confis- 
cation of rents by the State, — the author of 
this work ax3pearing as a welcome contributor 
to influential journals and reviews, and receiv- 
ing the greeting of crowded assemblies as the 
apostle of great sociological and economical 
reforms. 

It will be said : " The publication of such a 
work is certainly a curious phenomenon of the 
times, and a very disagreeable phenomenon; 
but surely the work itself cannot call for any 
serious consideration. ISTo intelligent person 
will read far in a book in which such gross 
incapacity for economical thinking is exhibited, 
in which a scheme so mad and anarchical is 
brought forward. Surely, society must long 
since have passed the point where it was nec- 
essary to discuss propositions like these, or to 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 7 

refute a writer who gives snch ample warning 
of the dangerous nature of his doctrines." 

But I think we cannot deal quite in this 
spirit with Mr. Henry George's " Progress and 
Poverty." As the London Quarterly Eeview 
remarks : " False theories, when they bear 
directly upon action, do not claim our atten- 
tion in proportion to the talent they are sup- 
ported by, but in proportion to the extent to 
which action is likely to be influenced by 
them ; and since action in modern politics so 
largely depends on the people, the wildest errors 
are grave, if they are only sufficiently popu- 
lar. . . . How they strike the wise is a matter 
of small moment; the great question is how 
they will strike the ignorant. . . . For practical 
purposes no proposals are ridiculous unless 
they are ridiculous to the mass of those who 
may act upon them. In any question in which 
the people are powerful no fallacy is refuted if 
the people still believe in it." ^ Unfortunately 
there is too much evidence of a profound popu- 
lar effect produced by this work upon the public 
mind of Great Britain, and, though more tardily, 
upon the public mind of the United States. 
The work was, in fact, published in 1879 ; 

1 Quarterly Review, January, 1883. 



8 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

but tliough it had a ready sale and attracted not 
a little attention, and even elicited some heed- 
less commendation by reason of the eloquence 
and picturesqueness of its style, it created its 
first sensation when reprinted abroad. In 
Great Britain the success of this book has been 
truly remarkable. 

" It is not the poor/' says the Eeview just 
cited, " it is not the seditious, only, who have 
been- thus affected by Mr. George's doctrines. 
They have received a welcome, which is even 
more singular, amongst certain sections of the 
really instructed classes. They have been 
gravely listened to by a conclave of English 
clergymen. Scotch ministers and non-conform- 
ist professors have done more than listen ; they 
have received them with marked approval; 
they have even held meetings and given lec- 
tures to disseminate them. Finally, certain 
trained economic thinkers, or men who pass 
for such, in at least one of our imiversities, are 
reported to have said that they see no means 
of refuting them, and that they probably mark 
the beginning of a new political epoch." 

Such a reception could hardly be accorded 
an American book abroad, without awakening 
new interest and stimulating a wider demand 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 9 

at home. It is said that "Progress and Pov- 
erty " has reached an enormous circulation. 
The author has certainly come to be one of 
the lions of the hour. There is no reason to 
suppose that his doctrines have yet deeply in- 
fected the public mind of this country ; yet the 
ingenuity and eloquence of this writer must 
produce no uiconsiderable effect upon any 
reader, however intelligent, and however forti- 
fied by economic study. 

It is in view of this fresh discussion of the 
tenure of land and of rent in its relations to the 
distribution of wealth, that it has seemed best 
to take occasion to go over the field, step by 
step, through its whole extent. I shall there- 
fore deA^ote this the present chapter to an ele- 
mentary statement of the economic law of rent. 
In the second chapter I shall discuss the at- 
tacks made by Messrs. Bastiat, Carey, and 
Leroy-Beaulieu upon that doctrine. In the 
third chapter I shall undertake to deal with 
attacks upon the individual ownership of land, 
as made, not by those who denounce all species 
of property, but by those who admit private 
property in the products of labor, of which they 
deem private property in land an invasion. In 



10 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

this connection attention will be invited to tlie 
later essays and sioeeches of Mr. Mill and to 
Mr. Henry George's work. In the fourth and 
last chapter I shall present some considera- 
tions related to the question. What, conceding 
the individual ownership of land, is that use 
of the soil which is most conducive to social 
and industrial welfare ? 

In pursuance of this scheme, let us now in- 
quire into the origin of rent. 

We will begin by assuming the existence of 
an isolated community occupying a territory 
of varying fertility. Let it, however, for sim- 
plicity of illustration, be conceded that, instead 
of an infinite diversity in this respect, each 
acre having its own rate of productiveness, the 
territory is divided into four tracts, each dis- 
tinctly defined. 

Thus, we might suppose that one tract would, 
with the application of a given amount of labor 
and capital, yield to the acre 24 bushels of 
wheat; the second, 22 bushels; the third, 20 
bushels ; the fourth, 18 bushels. 

Such a supposition does not transcend the 
limits of a reasonable assumption for the pur- 
poses of argument. The differences of fertility 
existing among the cultivated lands of any con- 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 11 

siderable district are not only as great as those 
indicated, but often very much greater. Thus, 
Mr. McCuUoch, the author of the '' Statistical 
Account of the British Empire," says : "A quar- 
ter of wheat may be raised in Kent, or Essex, 
or in the Carse of Gowrie, for a fourth or a 
fifth part, perhaps, of the expense necessary to 
raise it on the worst soils under cultivation." 
The range of productiveness among lands oc- 
cupied for the purposes of pasturage is very 
much wider still. Thus Sir James Caird, in 
his admirable work, " The Landed Interest and 
the Supply of Food," says : " The maximum of 
fertility, in the natural state, is a rich pasture 
capable of fattening an ox and two sheep an 
acre. Such soils are exceptional, though in 
most counties they are to be met with. . . . 
The minimum of fertility may be exemplified 
by a bleak mountain pasture where ten acres 
will barely maintain a small sheep." 

Now, in the case of the community under 
view, let us first take the stage where the pop- 
ulation yet remains so small that it can be sup- 
plied with food by the cultivation of only a por- 
tion of the most fertile of the four tracts of land. 

In this case, if the land in question be held 
by a number of competmg owners, either no 



12 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

rent at all will be paid, or else a rent so small 
that, for purposes of economic reasoning, we 
may treat it as no rent at all, the principle 
de minimis non curatur applying with not 
less force in economics than in law. 

The above result will be reached by the sim- 
ple and direct operation of the principle of 
self-interest among the owners of the land. 
Inasmuch as only a part of the land of that 
quality (the 24-bushel tract) is required for 
cultivation, each proprietor will, if only he can 
be assured against Waste, ~ of which element 
we shall speak hereafter,^ — desire to have his 
own land occupied, even at the smallest rent, 
rather than derive no income whatever there- 
from ; and as, by the supposition, all the lots 
are not required for cultivation, the competi- 
tion of owners will reduce the compensation 
for the use of land to that minimum which in 
economics we may disregard. 

Let us next contemplate the community as 
increased in numbers until the entire tract of 
land of the first quality will no longer produce, 
under the traditional cultivation, — that is, with 
the farming methods employed, and with the 
amount of labor and capital heretofore applied 

1 See post, pp. 51-53. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 13 

to tlie soil, — enough wheat for the mamtenance 
of the population. 

In this state of things the question will arise, 
Shall the additional labor power, which is al- 
ways presumed to exist when we speak of an 
increase of population, and upon which the ad- 
ditional members of the community must rely 
for their subsistence, — new hands to feed new 
mouths, — shall this additional labor power be 
applied to the soil heretofore under cultivation, 
or shall it be applied to a portion of the tract 
standing next in order of fertility and hereto- 
fore uncultivated, — that which we may call 
the 2 2 -bushel tract ? 

The answer to this question will depend 
on the answer to the prior question : Has 
cultivation on the 24-bushel tract reached the 
point of diminishing returns, or not ? 

What do we mean by the point of " diminish- 
ing returns " ? This should be fully and clearly 
explained before any further progress is at- 
tempted. The explanation is as follows. In 
the progressive cultivation of any considerable 
tract of land having any appreciable degree of 
fertility, a continually higher and higher degree 
of per capita production is attained, year by 
year, as the amount of labor applied to the 



14 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

soil increases, until a certain limit is readied. 
Thus, in the cultivation of a square mile of 
arable land, two laborers will produce more 
than twice as much as one ; four laborers will 
produce more than twice as much as two ; eight 
laborers will produce more than twice as much 
as four. Perhaps the eight laborers last al- 
luded to will produce twelve times as much as 
the first two, forty times as much as the first 
one. 

Such increase in productive power is due, 
first, to the opportunity afforded for co-opera- 
tion in labor, as, for instance, when two men 
do easily and rapidly something to which the 
strength of a single man would be utterly 
inadequate; and, secondly, to the division of 
labor and the organization of industry, which 
yield very great advantages as compared with 
an earlier industrial state. 

Now, the condition of agricultural develop- 
ment, in the course of which, by virtue of the 
mechanical advantages adverted to, the per 
capita product becomes greater and greater 
through the addition of new laborers, may be 
called the condition of "increasing returns." 
Just as surely, however, as the earth revolves 
around the sun, if labor continue to be applied 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF KENT. 15 

in increasing amount to the cultivation of any 
piece of land, a point will be reached — sooner 
on this piece, later on that, but at some time 
for every piece, according to the character of 
the soil — ■ after which more labor applied to 
the soil will, the art of agriculture and other 
conditions remaining constant, meet a less than 
proportional return. 

Some return the new labor applied to the 
land will undoubtedly secure. We can hardly 
imagine a situation where more labor judi- 
ciously applied to any tract ^ would not increase 
the crop more or less. But, as has been said, 
the return declines proportionally. From that 
point forward, additional labor can only be em- 
ployed in cultivation upon the condition of a 
smaller and still smaller per capita product. 

The point we have indicated marks the stage 
of " diminishing returns " in agriculture. "Where 

1 "It might be ploughed or harrowed twice instead of 
once, or three times instead of twice ; it might be dug 
instead of being ploughed. ; after ploughing, it might be gone 
over with a hoe, instead of a harrow, and the soil more com- 
pletely pulverized ; it might be oftener and more thoroughly 
weeded ; the implements used might be of a higher finish 
and more elaborate construction ; a greater quantity or more 
expensive kinds of manure might be applied, or, when ap- 
plied, they might be more carefully mixed and incorporated 
with the soil." — /. S. 3Iill. 



16 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

that point is, may not be easily ascertained for 
any single piece of land, probably never could 
be ascertained with absolute exactness by any 
series of experiments ; yet we know that such 
a point is there, will be reached, will in time 
be passed, if the application of labor and capital 
continue. On one side the per capita product 
rises, rapidly or slowly, but surely and con- 
stantly, under the mechanical advantages of 
co-operation in productive effort, the division of 
employments, the organization of labor. On 
the other side, the per capita product falls off, 
slowly or rapidly, but just as surely and con- 
stantly, under the chemical disadvantages which 
attend the attempt to extort a greater and still 
greater crop from the soil. That it does rise 
on the one side, that it does fall away on the 
other, is so manifest that no man of sound 
mind can question the fact. That at some 
point the turning takes place, reason tells us, 
though we may not be able to identify that 
point with assurance. 

Let us now return to the community whose 
experience with the land, under the condition 
of increasing population, we have been tracing. 
The whole extent of the 24-bushel tract having 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT 17 

been occupied, and having proved, under tlie 
traditional cultivation, inadequate to the needs 
of subsistence, the question, we see, has arisen, 
whether the additional labor shall be expended 
upon that tract, or be carried over to the tract 
next in order of fertility, — the 2 2 -bushel tract. 
The decision of that question depends, as has 
been said, on the decision of the prior question, 
whether the point of " diminishing returns " has 
been reached. If not, the additional labor will 
be applied to the familiar fields. If it have 
been reached, the additional labor will (subject 
to a slight hesitation due to that abrupt descent 
from one grade to another, which we assumed 
for convenience of illustration, the actual order 
of nature being an insensible gradation) be 
transferred to the 22-bushel tract, and thus, in 
the phrase of the economist, "cultivation will 
descend to inferior soils." 

That cultivation does so descend is a fact of 
familiar observation on every hand. There are 
few farms within which land is not cultivated 
which is poorer than the best, and it is so culti- 
vated because the farmer knows that it is more 
profitable for him to plough and plant a less 
fertile field than to attempt to force the yield 
of the more fertile up beyond a certain limit. 

2 



18 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Cultivation, then, descending to the 22-bushel 
tract, Eent emerges. Under what impulse ? 
Why, by this simple operation of the prin- 
ciple of self-interest : inasmuch as some of the 
would-be cultivators must go upon the 22- 
bushel tract, every person now in occupation of 
a lot on the 24-bushel tract may just as well 
— may he not ? — pay something for the privi- 
lege of remaining where he is, as take up a lot of 
the new land for nothing ? If not, why not ? 

How much shall he pay ? Wliy, clearly, 
2 bushels per acre, the difference between the 
yield of the two tracts, under the same ap- 
plication of labor and capital. The culti- 
vator of the better land, raising 24 bushels 
per acre, and out of this paying 2 bushels 
for the privilege of cultivation, which we will 
call Eent, will have 22 bushels left, net, 
which is all he could, by the supposition, raise 
from the new land. More than this margin, 
2 bushels, he will not pay, because, otherwise, 
he would do better to take up a lot of the 
new land.^ All of this margin he will pay, 
because, otherwise, some would-be cultivator 

1 The effects of the indisposition of the cultivator to 
change his place of labor and residence will be subsequently- 
allowed for. Bee post, pp. 42-51. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 19 

will offer to pay that rent, and thus cut him 
out of the occupancy. 

And this rental of 2 bushels per acre will 
apply to all the land in the 24-bushel tract, 
and not to a part of it only. As yet, however, 
no rent whatever is paid for any part of the 
2 2 -bushel tract, not even for that part which 
is cultivated, since, inasmuch as only a portion 
of it is required, competition among proprietors 
within this tract will prevent rent rising above 
that minimum which we treat as niL 

If, now, we suppose that, in the progress of 
population, the numbers of the community in- 
crease to the point where subsistence up to the 
traditional standard of living cannot, by the 
traditional methods of cultivation, be provided 
from the 24- and the 2 2 -bushel tracts together, 
recourse will be had to the third grade of soils, 
comprised within the 20-bushel tract. What 
will then happen in the matter of rents ? 
Why, this : the lands of the 20-bushel tract 
will bear no rent, for the reason which we con- 
templated in connection with the 22-bushel 
tract, when that comprised the lowest grade of 
soils under cultivation ; but rent will now 
emerge from the land just above it on the scale 
of fertility, and that rent will measure the 



20 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

excess of productiveness, as in the former case. 
Any actual cultivator of the 22-bushel tract 
may just as well pay 2 bushels rent, where 
he is, as go upon the new land, for nothing; 
any would-be cultivator may just as well settle 
here, paying this rent, as take up a free tract 
of the poorer land. 

And now, if we look back to the 24-bushel 
tract, we note a remarkable phenomenon. The 
soil here is no better than it was ; nothing has 
been done to increase its productiveness ; yet 
suddenly and peremptorily proprietors within 
this tract demand and receive 4 bushels per 
acre. Why is this ? Again the result is due 
to the simple and direct operation of the prin- 
ciple of self-interest in dealing with the land. 
Any person, actual cultivator or would-be cul- 
tivator, may just as well — may he not ? — 
pay 4 bushels here, as go upon the 22-bushel 
tract and pay 2 bushels rent, or " squat " 
upon the 20-bushel tract, paying nothing for 
the privilege. 

And if the increase of the numbers of the 
community requires cultivation (which, as we 
have seen, is always and everywhere subject to 
the law of " diminishing returns ") again to 
descend, and the soil within the 18-bushel tract 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 21 

is taken up, we shall find, according to the 
principle already abundantly illustrated, that 
this land itself will bear no rent, but that the 
20-bushel tract will now bear a rent of 2 
bushels per acre, while the rent of the 22-bushel 
tract will advance to 4 bushels and that of the 
24-bushel tract to 6 bushels. 

We state, then, the normal operation of the 
principle of self-interest in dealing vnth the land 
(that is, the Laiv of Bent), as folloivs : — 

Bent arises from the fact of varying degrees of 
productiveness in the lands actually contributing 
to the supp)ly of the same marhet, the least pro- 
ductive land paying no rent, or a rent so small 
that it may he treated as none. The rent of all 
the higher grades of land is measured upwards 
from this line, the rent of each piece ahsorling 
cdl the excess of produce above that of the no-i^ent 
land. 

Thus far we have, for simplicity of illustra- 
tion, spoken of fertility and productiveness indis- 
tinguishably, as if differences in productiveness 
were due solely to differences in the chemical 
constituents of the land, the depth of soil, its 
friabihty, etc., or to differences in climate, all 
of which are included in our conception of com- 
parative fertility. 



22 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

But we have now to note that the net pro- 
ductiveness of a tract of land may be reduced, 
in comparison with another tract of equal fer- 
tility, by either or both of two considerable 
causes : — 

1. The mechanical difficulties of cultivation, 
e. g. irregularity of surface. This consideration 
has been almost wholly neglected by writers on 
rent, and naturally enough in the past, when 
land was cultivated mainly with hand tools, — 
the hoe, the spade, the scythe, the sickle. But 
the rapid introduction of horse and even steam 
power into agricultural operations, since 1850, 
has made the character of the surface an impor- 
tant, though not the most important, element in 
the problem of rent. The land in a New Eng- 
land side-hill farm may be as fertile as that of an 
Illinois prairie farm, but the cost of cultivation 
may in the former case be enhanced thirty or 
fifty per cent through roughness of surface. 

2. A much more important cause in the reduc- 
tion of the net productiveness of land, for the 
purposes of rent, is found in distance from mar- 
ket. By distance, in this connection, we should 
understand, not absolute distance, as measured 
on a great circle of the earth, but resistance to 
transportation. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF EENT. 28 

To illustrate the operation of tliis cause, let 
us return to our four tracts of arable land, sup- 
plying a certain market, and yielding, respec- 
tively, 24, 22, 20, and 18 bushels of wheat per 
acre, with the application of a certam amount 
of labor and capital. These have been assumed 
to be all equally near to the market in which 
their produce is to be sold. 

Now, let us suppose that some enterprising 
cultivators undertake to open up a large tract 
of very fertile land situated at a considerable 
distance. The productiveness of this tract 
might even reach 30 bushels, as compared with 
the four tracts described; yet it might be 
found that, after the grain were harvested, the 
cattle and the men engaged in hauling the crop 
to market would eat up, on the round trip, not 
less than 12 bushels out of the produce of 
each acre, — in which case this tract would 
stand, for the purposes of rent, not on a level 
with the more fertile home tracts, but exactly 
in the position (30 — 12 = 18) of the 18-bushel 
tract ; and until this last-named were all taken 
up, the more distant lands would either not be 
cultivated at all, or would be cultivated with- 
out paying rent. 

But should some improvement in the means' 



24 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

of transportation reduce the amount of the de- 
duction to be made from the gross produce, on 
that account, very important effects might be 
wrought, not only as influencing the occupation 
and cultivation of this tract, but also as con- 
trolling the rent of the home tracts. Let us, 
first, suppose one bushel saved from the maw of 
the cattle and men engaged in transporting the 
crop to market. The net productiveness of 
the tract (30 — 11) would then be 19. Imme- 
diately the 18-bushel home tract would be 
thrown out of cultivation, as the labor and 
capital previously employed thereon could be 
more advantageously transferred to the new 
territory. And now a readjustment of rents 
must take place. The 19-bushel land will bear 
no rent. The highest grade of soils will bear 
a rent (24 — 19) of only 5 bushels ; the second 
grade, of only 3 ; the third grade, of only 1. 
If we assume the tracts to be of equal size, the 
aggregate amount of rents now received by the 
owners of land will be but 9 as against 12, a 
reduction of one fourth. Their land is just as 
good as it was before, yields just as much 
grain of unimpaired quality; but their rents 
have fallen, simply because the 18-bushel tract 
has been thrown out of cultivation, and the 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF KENT. 25 

19-busliel tract substituted as furnisliing tlie 
poorest grade of soils contributing to the sup- 
ply of the market. 

Let us further suppose that some improve- 
ment in carts, or the substitution of draught- 
horses for oxen, shortens the tmie taken for 
the transport of the grain, so that only nine 
bushels have to be deducted from the pro- 
duce of an acre ; what will be the effect on 
the cultivation of the several tracts, and on the 
amounts of rent yielded by them respectively ? 
The net produce of the distant tract (30 — 9) 
has now risen to 21 bushels. The 20-bushel 
tract must be abandoned. No one can culti- 
vate it and get his outlay back, so long as 
there is a limitless extent of free land on which 
wheat can be raised with a smaller expenditure 
of labor and capital. The highest grade of land 
now yields a rent of but 3 bushels an acre 
(24 — 21); the second of but 1 bushel. The 
aggregate amount received by the owners of 
land, in rents, sinks from 9 to 4, as the conse- 
quence of the last step taken, namely, the 
throwing out of certain soils, the uplifting of 
the lower limit of cultivation. 

Give the name America to the remote tract 
in this illustration, and you have a fair explana- 



26 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

tion of the tremendous effects produced, during 
the past few years, upon English and Irish rents, 
by the increasing severity of competition from 
this side the Atlantic, following the reduction 
in the cost of transportation. 

We now reach the second stage of our in- 
quiry. If rent arises solely as we have de- 
scribed, and if the amount of rent is measured 
by the rule that has been laid down, what is 
the influence of rent upon the distribution of 
wealth ? Who is richer and who is poorer by 
reason of it? In particular, how are the la- 
borers, on the one side, and the consumers of 
agricultural produce, on the other, affected 
thereby ? 

To get the clearest possible conception of 
the relations of the parties in interest, we will 
assume the English threefold organization for 
the purposes of agricultural production, — the 
landlord owning the land and leasing it to 
tenant farmers, who, on their part, hire those 
who perform the labor of cultivation, devoting 
their own time to the buying of tools, supplies, 
and work animals, to selling the produce, to 
superintending the progress of each part, by 
turns, of the work of the farm, while exercising a 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 27 

general administration of the wliole and assum- 
ing all the responsibilities of production. 

Under such an organization as is here de- 
scribed, the question of rent is wholly a ques- 
tion between landlord and tenant. It does not 
concern the laborer at all. It does not go fur- 
ther, and touch the interest of the consumer of 
agricultural produce.^ The laborer, on his part, 
gets no less wages because rent is paid; the 
loaf of bread would cost the consumer just as 
much, were all rents remitted. 

This is "a hard saying," and on its first 
statement appears incredible, but it is as sure- 
ly demonstrable as any theorem in geometry. 
Let us see. 

The normal price of any commodity is fixed 
by the cost of the production of that part of 
the supply which is produced under the most 
disadvantageous conditions. The cost of that 
portion, whatever that cost may be, will deter- 
mine the price of all other portions, no matter 
how much more favorable the conditions under 
which these may be produced. " 

1 It was one of the greatest of the mistakes of Adam 
.Smith that he believed rent to enter into the price of agri- 
cultural produce. "Eent," he says, "enters into the com- 
position of the price of commodities in a different way from 
wages and profits. " The fact is, it does not enter at all. 



28 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

Appl}dng this principle to a single agricul- 
tural crop, e. g. wheat, we say that the normal 
price of wheat will be fixed by the cost of 
raising it upon the least productive soils which 
are actually cultivated for the supply of the 
market. This cost must be covered by the 
price, or else wheat will not continue to be 
grown on those soils, while yet the fact that 
it is grown there now proves that this wheat 
constitutes a necessary part of the supply of 
the market. 

Whatever be the price of the wheat grown 
on the least productive soils, that price will — 
quality being assumed constant, or allowance 
being made for differences in quality — be paid 
for the wheat grown on more productive soils. 
This is clear, since, if dealers are to attempt to 
exact a higher price for one lot of wheat than 
for others, simply because it was raised at a 
greater cost, no one would buy from that lot. 

But if the price of the whole crop of wheat 
is to be fixed by the cost of raising it on the 
least productive soils actually cultivated, then 
rent is not a part of the price of agricul- 
tural produce, since the least productive soils 
pay no rent; and therefore rent cannot be a 
part of the price of the wheat raised there- 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEIXE OF EENT. 29 

from; and if not of this wheat, then of no 
wheat/ since, as we have seen, the price of the 
whole crop is fixed by the cost of that portion 
which is raised on the no-rent land. 

Let us look at it from another point of view. 
Suppose a landlord to hold the opinion that 
rent somehow, after all, in spite of all your 
fine-spun theories, must swell the price of the 
baker's loaf, and, in consequence of this con- 
viction, to remit, in an access of philanthropy, 
all his rents for the year. What will be the 
effect on the price of wheat ? I answer, None ; 
the tenants raising the wheat at the same cost, 
otherwise, as before, and selling it at a price 
determined by the cost of raising wheat on 
lands which pay no rent, would simply pocket 
the sums they would have paid in rent but for 
the landlord's bad political economy. 

But, it may be asked, will not the farmers, thus 
enriched, pay higher wages to their laborers ? 
No. Why should they ? They have been pay- 
ing wages at the usual rates, — rates determined 
by the demand for and the supply of labor. Noth- 
ing has happened to affect that demand or that 
supply. Moreover, why, even in equity, should 

1 " Corn is not high because a rent is paid ; but a rent is 
paid because corn is high." — Ricardo. 



30 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

tliey pay higher wages ? They have been paying 
the same wages as the farmers who cultivate 
the no-rent lands. Why should laborers work- 
ing on rich fields receive more than those 
whose lot it is to work on poor fields ? Where 
would be the justice of that ? The one set 
of laborers work as industriously and as effi- 
ciently as the other. In the matter of desert 
they are equal ; what should make discrimina- 
tion between them in the matter of wages ? 

But even though there were the strongest 
reason, in equity, why tenant farmers should 
hand over to their laborers the whole or a part 
of the rents remitted by the landlord, it will be 
seen that we have no assurance, human nature 
being what it is, that they would do so. They 
would pay wages at the old rates, sell their 
wheat at the old price, and put the difference 
into their own pockets. No economic force 
can be invoked which would carry the remitted 
rents, or any part of them, past the tenant farm- 
er's door. The landlord would be poorer for 
his mistake, the farmer richer ; but neither the 
agricultural laborer nor the consumer of agri- 
cultural produce would profit by it in the 
smallest degree. 

We conclude then that, the price of agricul- 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 31 

tural produce being fixed by the cost of raising 
it on the least productive soils actually con- 
tributing to the supply of the market, there 
remains, on all more productive fields, an excess 
of value above the cost of p)'i'oduction, a surplus, 
which, so far as the normal operation of the 
principle of self-interest is concerned, must 
become the property of the owner of the soil. 
The owner can give it away, as he can give 
away anything else that is his, or it can be 
taken from him by violence, as anything else 
may be taken ; but no economic force can en- 
ter to carry rent' to any point where it will 
either raise the price of labor or lower the 
price of produce. 

Such, in its simplest elements, is the normal 
operation of the principle of self-interest in 
dealing with the land. As formulated by Ei- 
cardo, this is known as the Economic, or Eicar- 
dian, doctrine of rent. Surely, no one who has 
followed me with care will hesitate to say that 
the doctrine, upon its assumptions, is incon- 
testably true, and that whoever denies it puts 
himself on the level of the man who denies 
that things which are equal to the same thing 
are equal to each other. 



32 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

I spoke of the doctrine as formulated by 
Eicardo. That illustrious economist was not, 
indeed, the first to announce the law of rent, 
which had been correctly and clearly stated by 
Andersen, a Scotch writer, in 1777. As by 
him declared, however, the doctrine failed to 
attract attention. Forty years later, it was, 
according to the usual statement, " simultane- 
ously rediscovered," in the early pari? of this 
century, by Mr. Malthus, Sir Edward West, and 
Mr. Eicardo. The cogency with which the 
arguments of the last-named writer were put, 
the stringency with which the principle in- 
volved was applied in stating the theory of 
value and in tracing the effects of taxation 
upon the distribution of wealth, have served to 
affix his name permanently to the doctrine, 
alike in England, in America, and on the con- 
tinent of Europe. 

We now come to a distinction which is most 
important in the theory of our subject. The 
principles thus far laid down relate only to the 
natural advantages of the land, productively, 
being such as are derived from fertility, from 
accessibility for the purposes of cultivation, or 
from nearness to the market where the produce 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 33 

is to be sold. From this point of view land is 
contemplated as unimproved. The return that 
shall be made to productive advantages acquired 
hy the land through the applications of capital, 
in the nature of permanent improvements, 
whether above or beneath the surface, is gov- 
erned by a law altogether different from that 
which we have thus far discovered. 

The law of capital differs from the law of 
rent in this : there is not theoretically any no- 
interest capital. We have seen that the exist- 
ence of a body of no-rent lands is essentially 
involved in the theory of rent. There is noth- 
ing corresponding to this m the law of capital. 
Practically it is doubtless true that some capi- 
tal bears a high interest ; other portions, a low 
interest; still other portions bring no returns 
to their owners, while, in cases not infrequent, 
the capital sum invested may even be itself 
lost, in whole or in part. But this is not at 
all involved in the nature of capital. Such a 
result would be due to the greater or less wis- 
dom displayed by investors in dealing with the 
portions of capital placed m their hands. In 
regard to land, on the contrary, the securing of 
rent by the owner does not depend on the 
greater or less wisdom of the proprietor, but is 
3 



34 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

determined by the conditions of the land itself. 
There is a reason, in the nature of the case, why 
one piece of land should bring a high rent, an- 
other a low rent, a third no rent at all. But in 
regard to two portions of capital, as yet unin- 
vested, there is no reason why one should bear a 
higher rate of interest than the other. And so, 
in theory, not only is there no no-interest capital, 
but all portions of capital bear an equal rate of 
interest, the divergences of actual from theoreti- 
cal interest being due to mistakes of calcula- 
tion, to misadventures beyond the power of the 
investor to foresee, to fraud, or other cause alto- 
gether outside the nature of the capital itself. 

The applications of capital to land are deter- 
mined by the same force which directs capital to 
other uses, namely, the expectation of a profit 
to the investor. If capital be applied to land, 
it is because the owner looks, wisely or weakly, 
to obtain, on the whole and in the long run, a 
return equal (the degree of security being taken 
fairly into account) to that which could be ob- 
tained through its application to any of the 
various purposes of manufacture, transporta- 
tion, or commerce. 

The main difference between capital invested 
in agriculture and that invested in other depart- 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 35 

ments of productive effort is found in tlie im- 
movability of such property. This is, however, 
a difference not of kind, but of degree only, 
since capital invested in many other ways 
becomes immovable, or movable only upon 
the condition of a heavy charge for transpor- 
tation, or a great loss of value in adapting it 
to other uses. 

We note, then, that what shall be paid for 
the use of land may consist of two parts, — 
rent proper, the remuneration for what Eicardo 
called the original and indestructible powers of 
the soil ; and fictitious rent, which is, in truth, 
nothing but interest upon capital invested. It 
is only to the former that the economic doc- 
trine of rent applies. When I speak of rent, 
without qualification, I beg to be understood to 
mean rent proper; though I shall sometimes 
express the adjective at critical points, as a 
fresh assurance against misconception. 

It has been said that capital would not be 
invested in agricultural improvements but for 
the expectation of a return equal to that de- 
rived from investments in other directions. 
But agricultural investments, being in a very 
high degree immovable, are, of course, subject 



36 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

to great or even total loss in case the operation 
prove to have been made ill-advisedly. 

Now let us further note here, that, in such a 
case as that just indicated, the loss is not borne 
in any degree by the proprietor of the soil, as 
such, be he, in fact, also the owner of the capi- 
tal invested in the soil, or not, but by the owner 
of the capital, as such. The loss arising from 
the failure of capital invested in agricultural 
improvements is not divided between the rent 
proper and the interest which together make 
up what is popularly called rent. Such loss 
falls wholly upon the interest part of this 
composite payment. Rent proper takes care 
of itself. Under the normal operation of the 
principle of self-interest, rent gets its own in- 
variably, indefeasibly. 

Let us illustrate. Suppose a field of which 
the economic rent, meaning thereby the pro- 
ductive advantages of that field over the poor- 
est or most distant field under cultivation for 
the supply of the market, is 50 bushels of 
wheat a year. Now let an investment of capi- 
tal take place, in the form of trenches, fences, 
buildings, or what not, of which the proper 
annual returns, according to the usual rate of 
interest, would be 50 bushels. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 37 

Were the produce of the field to be so in- 
creased thereby that, after repaying the cost of 
cultivation, a surplus of 120 bushels should 
remain, the economist does not contemplate 
this amount as divided equally between rent 
proper and interest, each receiving 60 bushels. 
On the contrary, the economist regards the 
rent of the land as still 50 bushels only, the 
remainder, 70 bushels, being interest on the 
investment. But if, in the opposite case, 
the produce remainmg, after repaying the cost 
of cultivation, should be but 80 bushels, the 
economist would regard not 40, but only 30, 
bushels as compensation for the sum invested 
in improvements, the amount of rent remain- 
ing, in any philosophical view, unaffected by 
the partial failure of that investment. 

The distinction to which attention is here 
invited is not a mere matter of finesse. It 
is of vital and vast importance in dealing 
with the question of the value of land, whether 
for rental or for sale, as we shall see ^ 
when we come to consider the attacks made 
upon the doctrine of rent by Mr. Carey and 
others. 

It has been said that, upon its assumptions, 

See^os^, i:)p. 76-85, 111, 112. 



38 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

that doctrine must be admitted by every person 
who is capable of understanding the terms in 
which it is stated. 

It has, however, frequently been alleged that 
those assumptions are so wide of the facts of 
human society, that the so-called economic law 
of rent is of no practical importance in the 
theory of the distribution of wealth. 

Let us, then, carefully consider the several 
successive assumptions which underlie this doc- 
trine. 

1. The doctrine assumes the private owner- 
ship of land, with real and active competition 
among proprietors, as contrasted with monop- 
oly secured by a combination of proprietors, or 
by a single proprietor ; for instance, the State. 

Thus, to return to the illustration which we 
pursued so much at length, we said that when 
the community was yet so small that all the 
members could be maintained by the cultivation 
of a portion only of the tract having the highest 
degree of productiveness, no rent whatsoever 
would be paid for any portion of that tract, 
even the portion actually cultivated, or, in 
any event, only a rent so small that, for pur- 
poses of economic reasoning, it could safely be 
disregarded. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF RENT. 39 

But if we suppose that all the proprietors of 
this tract firmly unite to demand a rent, what 
will be the result? Competition being de- 
stroyed, a rent may conceivably be exacted. 
How large a rent ? What will be its upward 
limit ? I answer, Two bushels an acre for the 
whole amount actually cultivated. More than 
this cannot be secured by any combination 
among the proprietors within this tract, since, 
if a higher rent were demanded, it would be- 
come the interest of every cultivator to resort 
to lands of the next grade of productiveness, 
namely, those within the 22-bushel tract, which 
could be had without rent. 

This rent of two bushels will not, it should 
be observed, be paid for all the land (say a 
acres) within the first-described tract, but only 
for so much of it as is actually required for 
cultivation (say x acres) to meet the existing 
demand for wheat. All the persons in the 
combination, those whose lands are cultivated 
and those whose lands are not, will have to 
divide among themselves the aggregate sum 
(2 X bushels) so obtained, no single proprietor 
securing so much as two bushels an acre for all 
of his individual estate. Each individual pro- 
prietor will then receive for each acre of liis 



40 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

land the following rent : i^i^n^M! Should one 
owner try to overreach the others by rentmg 
his own land privately, in contravention of the 
agreement, the combination would at once be 
broken, competition would set in, and rents 
would fall to the minimum. 

Such a combination is, of course, conceiv- 
able ; yet it would be wholly impracticable 
if any considerable number of proprietors 
were concerned. That the combination should 
be extended downwards, to include not only 
the proprietors of the next grade of land, 
the 22-bushel tract, but also those of the 20- 
bushel tract, and even of the lowest grade, 
the 18-bushel tract, for which otherwise no 
rent would be paid, but which, in the attempt 
to escape competition, would have to be 
brought within the combination, their owners 
becoming entitled to a share of the profits, and 
that thus a monopoly should be established 
governing the price of wheat, would mani- 
festly involve a thousand-fold the difficulties 
which would attend the formation of a com- 
bination to control the rent of lands all of the 
same grade. I am not aware that in the his- 
tory of mankind such a combination has ever 
anywhere been made and maintained; and 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF RENT. 41 

there seems little reason for appreliending such 
a combination in the future. 

But what individual owners could not do, 
Government may. There are instances of rents 
paid in new countries, as in Australia, while 
yet all even of the best lands were not taken 
up. This phenomenon, which several writers 
have mistakenly adduced as if it were in con- 
tradiction of Eicardo's law of rent, has been due 
to the fact that all available lands were held 
by the Government, which was thus able to 
fix a monopoly price. 

Now, under monopoly, price is wholly cut 
away from cost of production. It becomes 
purely a question of demand. What price shall 
be paid, — for Avheat, for example, — whether 
one dollar, or five, or fifty, will depend on how 
much consumers, who must get it, have with 
which to purchase it. Up to the limit of the 
absolute exhaustion of the resources of pur- 
chasers, price may be carried by the force of 
monopoly, and into that price, as Professor 
Cairnes has so well shown,^ rent does enter. 

1 **In the ordinary case of agi'icultural rent, the relation 
of rent to price is not that of cause to effect, but of effect to 
cause ; rent, that is to say, is the consequence, not the cause, 
of the high price of agricultural products. ... On the other 



42 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

Such would be tlie effect upon rent, and upon 
the price of produce, of universal land monop- 
oly. The matter is not, however, of great prac- 
tical interest, inasmuch as a monopoly of land, 
in any proper sense of the term, rarely exists 
over any considerable territory ; and were it to 
be established, even over large regions, its ef- 
fects would be kept down within narrow limits 
unless the importation of food were forbidden. 

2. The doctrine of rent, as we have stated 
it, assumes not only an active competition 
among land-owners, but also an active com- 
petition between land owners and cultivators 
as classes, and, still further, an active competi- 
tion throughout the cultivating class itself, each 
cultivator seeking his own interests as against 
those of any and every other. 

It is implied that the landlord, on his part, 
will unflinchingly demand all the rent which 
the excess of produce over that of the no-rent 
lands will allow the cultivators to pay ; and 
that he will exact this, if need be, at the cost 

hand, in the special cases of rent referred to, in the case, 
e. g., of the unoccupied Lands of a colony, — rent is, not the 
effect, but the cause of price. 

" The price of corn rises here because the Government de- 
mands a rent. In the ordinary case the landlord demands a 
rent because the price of corn is high." 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF EENT. 43 

of driving old tenants from the soil, not even 
giving favor to age, infirmity, or ajBfliction. 

On the part of the cultivator, it is implied 
that he will pursue his interest with unfailmg 
intelligence and unflagging zeal, hesitating not 
to raise the rent upon his fellows by overbid- 
ding them ; hesitating not to crowd himself into 
the place of any other cultivator, should a gain 
appear therein ; hesitating not, for any senti- 
mental reason, to abandon his own farm, his 
own home, his native country even, and seek 
his interest elsewhere, with absolute indiffer- 
ence to everything but an economic benefit. 

The barest statement of these conditions 
shows that Eicardo's law does not furnish a 
formula by which the compensation to be paid 
for the cultivation of any given piece of land 
can be determined in advance. The law is 
only true hypothetically, and the conditions 
taken for the purpose nowhere exist, in their 
theoretical completeness. The United States 
and Ireland are probably the only two con- 
siderable countries in which rents closely ap- 
proximating true competitive rents have been 
habitually paid. This fact does not deprive 
the economic law of rent of its significance 
and value. No projectile describes a perfect 



44 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

parabola ; yet tlie artillerist never fails to have 
reference to the law of the projectile, while 
pointing his piece. 

I have said that the United States and Ire- 
land are probably the only considerable coun- 
tries ^ in which true competitive rents have 
been habitually paid. The similarity of action, 
in this respect, in these two countries, has been 
due to altogether different causes, and has, 
through affecting widely different material in 
the two cases, produced altogether different re- 
sults. In the United States, the mobility of 
the population, their quick intelligence, their 
almost Ishmaelitish proclivity to change of 
place; the utter absence of popular notions 
regarding favors to be given in trade, or con- 
cessions to be made to classes supposed to be 
helpless and dependent ; the cheapness of lands 
within the area of settlement, and the standing 
offer, by the Government, of boundless tracts of 
good land along the frontier, free of charge, 

1 Professor de Laveleye speaks of the rents exacted by the 
small owners of land in certain districts of Belgium from 
those who are so unfortunate as to become their tenants, as 
true "rack rents," characterized by a severity of extortion 
rarely known elsewhere. But the area to which this state 
of things applies does not require a qualification of the 
already guarded statement in the text. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 45 

upon the sole condition of actual personal occu- 
pation and cultivation; and, lastly, the tradi- 
tional character of American agriculture, which 
up to this point in our history has been of a very 
superficial character,^ involving comparatively 

1 In an article in the " Princeton Review" of 1882, I ven- 
tured on the following vindication of that system of cultivation 
which has elicited so many expressions of disapproval from 
European tourists in America, and even from the self-consti- 
tuted guardians of our agricultural interests at home. " The 
American people, finding themselves on a continent containing 
an almost limitless breadth of arable land, of fair average 
fertility, having little accumulated capital and many urgent 
occasions for every unit of labor power they could exert, 
have elected — and in doing so they are, I make bold to say, 
fully justified, on sound economical principles — to regard 
the land as practically of no value, and labor as of high 
value ; have, in pursuance of this theory of the case, syste- 
matically cropped their fields on the principle of obtaining 
the largest crops with the least expenditure of labor, limiting 
their improvements to what was required for the immediate 
purpose specified, and caring little about returning to the 
soil any equivalent for the properties taken from it by the 
crops of each successive year. What has been returned has 
been only the manure generated incidentally to the support 
of the live stock needed to work the farm. In that which 
is for the time the great wheat and corn region of the United 
States, the fields are, as a rule, cropped continuously, with- 
out fertilization, year after year, decade after decade, until 
their fertility sensibly declines. 

"Decline under this regimen it must, sooner or later, later 
or sooner, according to the crop and according to the degree 



46 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

little expenditure for the benefit of tlie soil 
beyond the requirements of the annual crop, 

of original strength in tlie soil. Resort must then be had 
to new fields of virgin freshness, which, with us in the 
United States, has always meant ' The West.' When Profes- 
sor Johnston published his ' ISTotes on North America, ' in 1851, 
the granary of the continent had already moved from the 
flats of the lower St. Lawrence to the Mississippi Yalley, the 
north and south line which divided the wheat product of 
the United States into two equal parts being approximately 
the line of the 82d meridian. In 1860, it was the 85th ; 
in 1870, the 88th ; in 1880, the 89th. 

" Meanwhile, what becomes of the regions over Avhich this 
shadow of partial exhaustion passes, like an eclipse, in its 
westward movement ? The answer is to be read in the con- 
dition of New England to-day. A part of the agricultural 
population is maintained in raising upon limited soils the 
smaller crops, garden vegetables and orchard fruits, and pro- 
ducing butter, milk, poultry, and eggs for the supply of the 
cities and manufacturing towns which had their origin in 
the flourishing days of agriculture, which have grown with 
the age of the communities in which they were planted, and 
which, having been well founded when the decadence of 
agriculture begins, flourish the more on this account, inas- 
much as a second part of the agricultural population, not 
choosing to follow the westward movement of the grain cul- 
ture, are ready with their rising sons and daughters to enter 
the mill and factory. Still another part of the agricultural 
population gradually becomes occupied in the higher and 
more careful culture of the cereal crops on the better portion 
of the former breadth of arable land, the less eligible fields 
being allowed to spring up in brush and woods ; deeper 
ploughing and better drainage are resorted to ; fertilizers are 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 47 

except as to expenditures of a constructive or 
mechanical nature, thus leaving the question of 
"unexhausted improvements," between tenant 
and landlord, a very simple one, — all these 
causes have combined in the United States to 
bring actual and theoretical rent close together. 

No landlord here would hesitate to demand 
the utmost rent which he thought the tenant 
would pay; nor would any degree of popular 
odium attend a change of tenants, made solely 
on the ground that the new-comer offered more 
for the privilege of cultivation. It would be 
held that it was the landlord's right to get the 
full value of his land and to do whatever 
should be necessary to that end; while in a 
country where nine and a half millions of the 
native population live in other States than 
those in which they were born, any effort to 

now employed to "bring up and to keep up the pristine fer- 
tility of the soil. And thus begins the systematic agricul- 
ture of an old State. . . . 

"It is in the way described that Americans have dealt 
with the soil opened to them by treaty or by purchase. And 
I have no hesitation in saying that posterity will decide, first, 
that it was both economically justifiable and politically for- 
tunate that this should be done ; and, secondly, that what 
has been done was accomplished with singular enterprise, 
prudence, patience, intelligence, and skill," 



48 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

arouse indignation, or even pity, at the specta- 
cle of an evicted family would be ludicrously 
futile. Here, then, we have competitive rents 
nearly in their fulness, the normal operation 
of the principle of self-interest being only re- 
strained by that degree of ignorance and inertia 
which may be found among the most enlight- 
ened and enterprising peoples. 

In England, however, the very country of 
Bicardo, competitive rents have never been 
generally exacted. Here we find sentiments of 
mutual obligation between landlord and tenant, 
sentiments having a political or a social origin, 
entering to modify profoundly the operation 
of purely economic forces. " The rent of agri- 
cultural land," says Professor Thorold Eogers, 
" is seldom the maximum annual value of the 
occupancy ; in many cases, is considerably be- 
low such an amount." Not only are the land- 
lord's own instincts of acquisition in general 
tempered by personal good-will between himself 
and his tenant, but an imperious public senti- 
ment would protect the tenant against an un- 
duly exacting landlord, to the extent of the 
social proscription of the offending party. 'No 
English gentleman could crowd an industrious 
tenant, who had been long upon the estate, out 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 49 

of liis holding, to admit a stranger, without 
having the whole parish or the whole county 
crying shame upon him. 

By the force of sentiments like these, the 
normal operation of the principle of self-inter- 
est in dealing with the land is, in England, so 
far restrained that no inconsiderable part of 
what might, by Kicardo's law, be exacted in 
rent, remains unclaimed in the hands of the 
occupier, the tenant farmer. Upon the Conti- 
nent of Europe, competitive rents are not even 
the rule, to which exception is made by virtue 
of such causes as have been indicated. In 
general, custom determines the amount of rent ; 
and while custom has always a certain refer- 
ence to the comparative productive advantages 
of land, it is the universal admission of all 
writers, whether liberal or conservative, upon 
this subject, that it has the effect, supported, as 
it is, by feelings of personal good- will and by a 
public sentiment which recognizes and is pre- 
pared to enforce the obligation of the noble 
and wealthy classes to be considerate and mer- 
ciful in dealing with the peasantry, to cause a 
divergence, often a very wide divergence, from 
competitive rents, always in favor of the culti- 
vator. So strong is custom, in controlling the 
4 



50 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

actions of men in dealing with the land, that 
over large portions of Continental Europe, the 
rents, consisting generally of a share of the 
produce, are not changed ^ from generation to 
generation, notwithstanding the growth of pop- 
ulation, sending cultivation down to soils of 
lower and still lower fertility. It is true that 
the landlord gains through the enhanced value 
of his share of the produce ; but it is also true 
that the cultivator realizes a large gain (of 
which by the Eicardian law he would have 
been deprived) through the enhanced value of 
so much of the produce as remains to himself. 

It is not necessary at this time to enter, 
merely for illustration of our principle, upon so 
large and so difficult a question as that of rents 
in Ireland. Here in the past have been seen the 
full effects of competition, — competition, not, 
as in the United States, between classes sub- 
stantially equal in intelligence and freedom of 

1 Indeed, it is, as Sir Henry Maine remarks, "all but 
certain that the idea of taking the highest obtainable rent for 
land is relatively of very modern origin. The rent of land 
corresponds to the price of goods ; but doubtless was infi- 
nitely slower in corresponding to economical law, since the 
impression of a brotherhood in the ownership of land still 
survived, when goods had long since become the subject of 
individual property." — Village Communities, p. 198. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 51 

movement; competition, not, as in England, 
restrained by kindly sentiments and conserva- 
tive usages ; ^ but a competition between a land- 
lord class, few in numbers, rich in accumulated 
means, thoroughly united among themselves as 
the result of generations of suppressed warfare, 
and cherishing towards the peasantry, not the 
feelings natural to the lord of the soil, but the 
fears, the jealousies, the hatreds, that are born 
of race and religious antagonisms, and, on the 
other part, a tenant class, whose numbers were 
largely in excess of the capabilities of the land 
to support, and who were, in character, ignorant, 
superstitious, and improvident, their very vir- 
tues of generosity and hopefulness contributing 
to further disqualify them for the competition 
which they were compelled to enter upon for 
the occupation of the soil. 

Two minor assumptions, involved in Eicardo's 
law, are : (1.) The indifference of the landlord 
to the possibility of waste being committed by 
the tenant, and (2.) The indifference of the 

1 "The three rents are : Eack-rent from a person of a 
strange tribe ; a fair rent, frmn one of the tribe ; and the 
stipulated rent, which is paid equally by the tribe and the 
strange tribe." — Senchus Mor, quoted by Maine, Village 
Communities, p. 187. 



52 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

tenant towards the value of tlie improvements 
he may have incorporated with the soil. Of 
course, neither of these assumptions is even 
supposed to correspond to the facts. They 
are made merely for convenience of reasoning 
and simplicity of illustration. 

Inasmuch as wanton malice, greed, or mere 
neglect, on the part of the tenant may impair, in 
a greater or smaller degree and more or less 
permanently, the fertility of land, it might 
readily happen that, contrary to the supposition 
made, the proprietor of land of the highest 
grade would prefer to have his land remain 
unoccupied rather than admit a distrusted ten- 
ant on a minimum rent. In this way the actual 
operation of the principle of self-interest might 
be made to differ in some degree from what we 
have described as the normal operation of that 
principle. Lands of this class might be held 
out of cultivation until the accumulating stress 
of the principle of "diminishing returns " upon 
the cultivators of the higher-grade lands led to 
the offer of a rent for these lands which, though 
low, could not yet properly be called a mini- 
mum rent (to be treated as nil), being substan- 
tial enough to constitute a sort of guarantee to 
the proprietor, or, to put it in another form, 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTEINE OF KENT. 53 

being so far considerable as to make him think 
it worth while to take some risk regarding 
waste. 

On the other hand, the tenant is never likely 
to be so free to move to other land as is assumed 
in the economic doctrine of rent, inasmuch as 
the existence of " unexhausted improvements " 
wrought by him in the soil is likely to hold 
him in his place, with a greater or less degree 
of tenacity, inducing him to remain where he 
is, even though obtaining somewhat less annu- 
ally by present exertions than he might in 
another locality, rather than permanently sac- 
rifice the benefit of his improvements by a 
removal. 

I do not know that any other qualification of 
the Eicardian doctrine of rent, arising from the 
nature of the assumptions which underlie it, 
needs to be expressed in order to place us in a 
position to examine the views of recent writers 
regarding the actual influence of rent on the 
distribution of wealth. 

It will be observed that the degree of this 
influence must depend, primarily, on the lower 
limit of cultivation, what economists commonly 
call the margin of cultivation. If the range of 



64 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

net productiveness between the soils actually 
under cultivation at the same time, for the supply 
of the same market, be narrow, no matter how 
great the average productiveness of the whole 
body of lands, the amount paid in rent will be 
small. As that range increases, even though 
the average net productiveness should decline, 
and decline greatly, the amount paid in rents 
would increase. 

Suppose six lots of land, of 1,000 acres each, 
supplying a given market, to produce, severally, 
40, 39, 38, 37, 36, and 35 bushels per acre, the 
amount of rent realized therefrom, according 
to the formula of Eicardo, will be 15,000 bush- 
els, out of a total production of 225,000 bushels, 

or tV 

Now suppose that the same lots produce, 
severally, but 30, 28, 26, 24, 22, and 20 bushels. 
Here we should have an aggregate production 
of but 150,000 bushels, and yet the amount 
of -rent would rise to 30,000 bushels, reaching 
-| of the produce. If, again, we were to assume 
that the lots produced, severally, 30, 27, 24, 21, 
18, and 15 bushels, we should find the aggre- 
gate product sinking to 135,000 bushels ; but 
of this not less than 45,000 bushels, or J the 
crop, would go as rent. 



THE ECONOMIC DOCTRINE OF RENT. 55 

'' Eent is always," said Mr. Eicardo, " tlie 
difference between the produce obtained by 
the employment of two equal quantities of 
capital and labor. . . . 

"Whatever diminishes the inequality of 
produce obtained from successive portions of 
capital employed on the same or on new land, 
tends to lower rent ; and whatever increases 
that inequality necessarily produces an oppo- 
site effect and tends to raise it." 

The range tetween the higher and the lower 
limit of cultivation we see, therefore, is of prime 
importance in the discussion of the influence 
of rent upon the distribution of wealth, as it 
determines the actual amount of the produce 
which, under the Eicardian formula, will go 
into the hands of the landlord simply for the 
privilege of applying labor and capital to the 
land. 

Upon what we shall ascertain as to the ex- 
isting facts and the manifest tendencies of 
economical forces in this matter of the margin 
of cultivation, so called, will depend our decision 
whether M. Leroy-Beaulieu is right in declaring 
that rent has ceased to be of any importance 
in the distribution of wealth; or Mr. George 
is right in declaring that rent is a deadly evil. 



56 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

which is every day drawing nearer and nearer 
to the vital organs of the State ; or, thirdly, 
whether both these gentlemen are not wrong, 
the one in unduly disparaging, the other in 
unduly magnifying, the importance of rent in 
the distribution of wealth, under modern eco- 
nomic conditions. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 57 



CHAPTEE II. 

ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 

I SHALL not attempt even to name all those 
writers who have, at one time or another, from 
one quarter or another, assailed the economic 
doctrine of rent, as it was stated and illustrated 
in the last chapter. I shall ask the reader's 
attention to the arguments of but three writers, 
M. Bastiat, Mr. Henry C. Carey, of our own 
country, and M. Leroy-Beaulieu, the present 
editor of the " Economiste Eranqais " and the 
successor of Michel Chevalier, as professor of 
political economy in the College de France. 

BASTIAT. 

It may be assumed that the reader is familiar 
with the essays and popular tracts of that in- 
genious and eloquent socio-economical writer, 
Frederic Bastiat. His argument against the 
accepted doctrine of rent will be found in 



58 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

chapters viii. and ix. of his "Harmonies of 
Political Economy." 

Bastiat's argument against the doctrine of 
rent is supplemental to his attempted demon- 
stration of the proposition that, not the gifts 
of nature, such as are found in soil and climate, 
not even the high mental or muscular endow- 
ments of individuals, but human efforts, are 
the creative cause of value. 

Bastiat wrote especially in opposition to the 
communistic orators and pamphleteers of his 
day, that is, of the period of the Eevolution 
of 1848. He wrote with a strong political 
intention, and discussed economical principles 
always with a side glance at the existing social 
situation. Could he have satisfactorily demon- 
strated the proposition just stated, it is evi- 
dent he would have achieved an easy triumph 
over his antagonists. Wealth, the substance of 
which value is the attribute, would be found 
only in the hands of those who had created it ; 
than which what could be more reasonable and 
righteous ? 

But against the view that human effort is 
the sole and sufficient creative cause of value, 
Bastiat found arrayed not only the compact 
opinion of all economists of reputation, but also 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF EENT. 59 

a great number and variety of familiar in- 
stances in which the possession of value is seen 
to be either irrespective of, or altogether out of 
proportion to, the human effort bestowed. 

Blocked thus in his attempted progress in 
this direction, Bastiat broke through a passage 
for himself, and secured at least a seeming^ and 
temporary triumph by introducing into the dis- 
cussion of value the equivocal word " service." ^ 

Now the word " service " may signify either 
personal exertions made in another's behalf, or 
acts, not necessarily onerous, by which another 
person is served or benefited. In other words, 
service may mean either the taking of 'pains by 
a person rendering the service, or the samng of 
pains to the person receiving the service. 

This equivocal word admirably suited Bas- 
tiat's controversial exigencies. It was easy 
enough to prove that value depended upon ser- 
vice, in the sense of saving pains to the person 
purchasing, because, clearly, no one would pur- 
chase an article unless pains were saved to him 
thereby, — that is, unless he obtained the article 
with less pains to himself, with less of effort and 

1 On Bastiat's use of this word, Professor Cairnes has 
commented with great and not undeserved severity. See 
his Essay on Bastiat. 



60 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

sacrifice, than would be necessary in producing 
it for himself. On the other hand, Bastiat, 
having thus established his proposition that 
value originates in service, and that the quan- 
tum of value is proportional to the quantum of 
service, turned about to his popular constitu- 
ency only to use this juggling word, " service," 
in the sense of the taking of pains by the person 
selling. If a man, he would ask, only gets for 
his product that which is proportioned to the 
exertions he has made, what more could be 
asked ? Who will challenge the equity of such 
an exchange ? 

It seems astonishing that a mere equiwque, 
like that which runs through Bastiat's whole 
theory of value, should have completely im- 
posed on American economists, one of the most 
meritorious of whom has written : "I had 
scarcely read a dozen pages in that remarkable 
book when, closing it and giving myself to an 
hour's reflection, the field of political economy, 
in all its outlines and landmarks, lay before 
my mind, just as it does to-day. . . . From 
that hour political economy has been to me a 
new science." And this author elsewhere at- 
tributes especial influence over his mind to 
Bastiat's views on Value and Land, on each of 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 61 

which the witty, subtile, eloquent rrenchman 
was about as far wrong as it is possible for an 
eloquent, subtile, and witty Frenchman to be. 

At home, certainly, Bastiat never took rank 
as a constructive economist, though nowhere 
were the delicacy of the wit and the pungency 
of the satire with which he discussed many 
false and dangerous social and industrial theo- 
ries so fully appreciated or so highly relished 
as in his native country. 

But while, as a serious contribution to the 
theory of value, Bastiat' s conception of eco- 
nomic " services " — which, as we have said, in 
some places he defines as the saving of pains 
to the person receiving, as distinguished from 
the taking of pains by the person rendering, so 
that the term in this use becomes almost equiv- 
alent to the ordinary meaning of the word 
" demand " — is utterly without significance, it 
is perhaps even more surprising that his writ- 
ings on this theme should have had the slight- 
est degree even of present popular influence 
in quieting disaffection regarding the rights of 
property. For let it be conceded that value 
is exactly according to the " service " rendered, 
that is, the pains saved to the person receiv- 
ing the service, has not the proUtaire wit 



62 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

enough, when that wit is quickened by the 
sense of wrong or the feeling of hardship, to 
ask, Ah ! but how comes it that this man is in 
a position to render me so easily a service which 
I must repay at so great a cost to me ? 

It is indeed true that the man who sells me 
anything renders me, in one sense, a service. 
I should not buy that thing unless I wanted 
it ; unless it were more useful to me than that 
I part with in exchange for it. That I buy 
of this person, and not of another, is a proof, 
or at least creates a strong presumption, that 
I buy at a lower price, or with a smaller ex- 
penditure of time and trouble in purchasing, 
or think I do so, than if I had bought of 
another. So far he has rendered me a service. 
Yet, if there is to be question respecting the 
equitableness of existing social arrangements, it 
is still possible, and reasonable as well, for me 
to go behind the situation, in which it is ad- 
mitted there is a fair and free exchange of 
equivalent " services," and inquire how it hap- 
pened that the two parties came severally into 
the positions in which that exchange finds 
them. 

A receiver of stolen goods sells me something 
that I stand greatly in need of, at a very low 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 63 

price. Strictly as between liim and me, as 
trading persons, lie doubtless renders me a ser- 
vice, the full equivalent of the money I pay to 
him ; but as between society and him, and 
even between him and me as a member of 
society, there is an account still open that has 
to be adjusted. 

A highwayman points a pistol at my head, 
but offers to spare me if I shall give him $500, 
which I proceed to do with the greatest alacrity. 
In sparing my life he renders me the highest 
possible service, one for which I would gladly, 
were it needful, pay many times $500. Indeed, 
on no equal payment during my hfe do I so 
much felicitate myself. Still the question will 
arise, How came the highwayman to be in a 
position to do me such a vital service, and, after 
all, what right has he to what was my $500 ? 

In like manner, while the owner of land who 
at a certain rent leases to me a few acres on 
which I may work to raise food for myself and 
family, undoubtedly does me a great service, as 
compared with not giving me leave to cultivate 
it upon any terms whatever, it will still be ra- 
tional and pertinent for me to inquire, at least 
under my breath, what business he has with 
the land, more than I or any one else. Why 



64 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

sliould I not have the whole produce of my 
ten-acre lot without deduction, although I freely 
confess that I would rather submit to the de- 
duction than not have it at all ; in other words, 
that a service, in Bastiat's sense, has been re- 
ceived by me. 

It will appear that while Bastiat uses the 
fact of service rendered as, of itself, sufficiently 
establishing the equitableness of property, the 
capability of rendering a service, in the ex- 
tended use which at times he gives to that 
term, may reside in a man by virtue of 
possessions most inequitably or even iniqui- 
tously obtained or retained. Yet Bastiat was 
so far satisfied with his demonstration of what 
seemed to him the perfect and indefeasible har- 
mony of property and justice, that, addressing 
the owners of property, he exclaims : " You 
have not intercepted the gifts of God. You 
have received them gratuitously, it is true, 
at the hands of nature; but you have also 
gratuitously transferred them to your brethren 
without receiving anything. They have also 
acted in the same way towards you ; and the 
only things which have been reciprocally com- 
pensated are physical and intellectual efforts, 
toils undergone, dangers braved, skill exercised, 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 65 

privations submitted to, pains taken, services 
rendered and received;" and lie states, with 
especial emphasis and distinctness, the proposi- 
tion that "Every man enjoys gratuitously all 
the utilities furnished or created by nature, on 
condition of taking the trouble to appropriate 
them, or of returning an equivalent service to 
those who render him the service of taking that 
trouble for him." 

"Taking the trouble to appropriate them," 
is good. One can imagine the sardonic smile 
with which Mr. Jay Gould would receive and 
accept the congratulations of the eloquent 
optimist, upon the benefits he had conferred 
upon mankind by "taking the trouble to ap- 
propriate" the utilities furnished or created 
by nature to the extent of a cool hundred 
millions. 

I have said that M. Bastiat's argument 
against the economic doctrine of rent is sup- 
plemental to his attempted demonstration that 
all the gifts of nature, of every kind, are abso- 
lutely gratuitous. In dealing with the special 
case of landed property, he still relies upon the 
potency of the word " services " to establish the 
righteousness of the institution. " It is," he says, 
" rigorously exact to say that the proprietor of 
5 



66 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

land is, after all, the proprietor only of a value 
which he has created, of services which he has 
rendered ; and what property can be more 
legitimate ? It is property created at no one's 
expense, and neither intercepts nor taxes the 
gifts of God." 

The exceptional difficulty, however, of meet- 
ing manifest facts regarding the rent of land, 
and the universal consent of economists that 
there is, on all but the lowest grade of soils, 
an excess of produce, a clear surplus, above the 
cost of production, seemed to require of M. 
Bastiat that he should here make a distinct and 
special demonstration of his proposition con- 
cerning the relation of services to value. Con- 
sequently, we have, in the chapter on Landed 
Property, a laborious attempt to vindicate that 
species of property on the ground of natural 
right, in opposition to the view of nearly all 
publicists, founded on the current economic 
doctrine, that private property in land is a 
privilege conferring unearned advantages upon 
individuals, only to be justified by the public 
benefits resulting from the private cultivation 
and improvement of the soil. 

M. Bastiat enters upon his task with zeal 
and courage. He denounces the statement of 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF EENT. 67 

Eicardo, McCuUocli, and Senior, of Say, Gamier, 
and Blanqui, that rent is paid for the use of 
the original and indestructible powers of the 
soil, declaring that if rent have this origin, then, 
indeed, in the language of Proudhon, property 
is robbery, — a dangerous admission in the land 
of Frenchmen ! M. Bastiat, however, entertains 
no doubt of his own competency to establish a 
wholly independent basis for rent, which shall 
make its payment consist with his glowing 
theory of the Mutuality of Services. 

The main argument of this chapter of the 
Economic Harmonies we shall meet hereafter, 
in better form, when reviewing Mr. Carey's 
discussion of the same subject It is directed 
to the demonstration of the proposition that the 
actual value of land does not exceed the accu- 
mulated labor that has been spent in giving it 
value ; the inference being that, therefore, noth- 
ing but labor can have entered to give land 
any portion of its value. We shall see how 
delusive is this mode of demonstration. What 
is especially noticeable in Bastiat's reasoning 
is that, in enumerating the forms of human 
effort which have given value to the land, he 
does not confine himself to the labors of indi- 
vidual proprietors upon their respective estates, 



68 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

but is continually adducing the efforts of the 
community, what M. Leroy-Beaulieu calls " so- 
cial labor," that is, labor expended in building 
bridges and roads, labor expended in rearing 
towns for manufacture and trade which shall 
furnish a market for the produce of the farms, 
labor expended in promoting general interests 
and in preserving the public peace. 

Now, so far as it is the labor of the commu- 
nity, social labor, which has given value to the 
land, the individual proprietor is in possession 
of wealth which he has not created. That 
wealth, being in so far due to the exertions of 
the community, should, on M. Bastiat's princi- 
ple, be common to all. And thus the outcome 
of this labored defence of landed property on 
grounds of natural right is to exhibit the owner 
of land in the exclusive enjoyment of a value 
derived from the labor of others ! 

In a vain effort to avert this conclusion, 
M. Bastiat falls back upon an argument which 
may be cited to show the utter incompetence 
of this brilliant pamphleteer to deal with 
questions relating to land and its rent. 

" There is here," he says, " no injustice, no 
exception in favor of landed property. No 
species of labor, from that of the banker to 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 69 

that of tlie (lay laborer, fails to exhibit the 
same phenomenon. No one fails to see his 
remuneration improved by the improvement 
of the society in which his work is carried on. 
This action and reaction of the prosperity of 
each upon the prosperity of all, and vice versa, 
is the very law of value. . . . The lawyer, the 
physician, the professor, the artist, the poet, 
receive a higher remuneration for an equal 
amount of labor, in proportion as the town or 
country in which they belong increases in wealth 
and prosperity." E'ow this is specious : it 
looks solid; but let us touch it witii a pin. 
M. Bastiat here represents the owner of the 
land as working on it, and deriving increased 
wealth with the increased prosperity and grow- 
ing numbers of the community ; as, for that 
matter, do the banker, the lawyer, and the phy- 
sician. Where, he asks, is the injustice of this ? 
But suppose the owner of land does not 
cultivate it. Suppose he is himself a banker, 
lawyer, or physician, and lets his land to be 
cultivated by others. Do we not find him, 
then, receiving two shares, instead of one, out 
of the general increase of wealth, — one, as 
banker, lawyer, or physician, through his en- 
hanced fees or profits ; the other, as landlord, 



70 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

through the enhancement of the price of agri- 
cultural produce ? What right has he, on 
M. Bastiat's principles, as but one man, to 
more than one share ? 

But is it said, he receives the second share as 
the proprietor of the productive power of the 
labor of the past ; had he invested his means — 
saved by himself, or derived from some frugal 
ancestor — in other forms of wealth besides 
land, he would still, under the conditions as- 
sumed, receive an equal benefit from the gen- 
eral prosperity ? No, no ! that will not do. 
M. Bastiat, if, in his own judgment, he has 
demonstrated anything, has proven conclu- 
sively that the power of the labor of the past 
to purchase present labor is continuously on 
the declme. With great emphasis and much 
iteration he lays down the general proposition 
that '' one of the effects of progress is to di- 
minish the value of all existing instruments." 
Under this law, the reward or return to the 
landlord should, if it be true that land owes 
its value solely to capitahzed labor, continually 
decline. That it does not decline, is due to 
the fact established by Eicardo, that, on all but 
the lowest grade of soils, there is a surplus 
above the cost of cultivation, which, through 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 71 

the progress of society and the multiplication 
of the numbers of the community, tends to 
increase, and which, so far as economic forces 
alone are concerned, goes into the hands of the 
proprietor, as compensation for the use of 
the natural advantages of the land. 

But it is in his " Brother Jonathan " illus- 
tration, so often quoted or referred to, that we 
are made most painfully to realize this gifted 
writer's incapacity for dealing with questions 
relating to land. In this somewhat protracted 
study, he supposes Brother Jonathan, " a labo- 
rious water-carrier of JSTew York," to emigrate 
to Arkansas, where he buys land from the Gov- 
ernment at a dollar an acre. This price, how- 
ever, M. Bastiat tells us, as if anxious to shut 
himself off from any possible explanation of 
his subsequent misconceptions, represents only 
the value of the improvements which Grovern- 
ment has already made, of the security it is 
prepared to afford to occupants, and of the 
mail facilities it has provided. 

M. Bastiat proceeds to represent Brother 
Jonathan as taking his first crop to market and 
demanding for it something more than the 
recompense of his present and former labor, 
upon the express ground that "English and 



72 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

Frencli economists had assured him " that, in 
the character of a proprietor of land, he was 
entitled to derive a profit from the productive 
and indestructible powers of the soil. But 
here he fails, the merchant declining to pay 
more than the cost of producing the crop. 

M. Bastiat next represents Brother Jona- 
than as negotiating with a would-be cultivator 
as to the rent of his farm. Again Brother 
Jonathan claims something for the use of his 
farm over and above the proper interest of the 
sum which would be necessary to bring another 
lot of Arkansas land into as good condition as 
his own, alleging that he is authorized to do so 
"according to the principles of Eicardo and 
Proudhon;" and again he meets with failure, 
the tenant offering him a rent which only cor- 
responds to interest at current rates, upon the 
capital actually invested in the soil. 

Still, a third time, M. Bastiat depicts Brother 
Jonathan, when trying not to lease but to sell 
his farm, encountering the disappointment of 
the expectations which had been inspired in 
him by the economists. 

" It is needless to say," goes the story, " that 
no one would give him more for it than it cost 
himself. In vain he cited Eicardo, and repre- 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTKINE OF RENT. 73 

sented the inherent value of the indestructible 
powers of the soil. The answer always was, 
* There are other lands close by ; ' and these few 
words put an extinguisher on his exactions and 
his illusions." 

Now, can one readily believe that a writer 
so thoroughly honest in purpose as M. Bastiat 
could so egregiously misrepresent and misstate 
the doctrine he had chosen to combat ? 

It is of the very essence of the Eicardian law 
of rent that there is a body of no-rent lands 
which, by reason of their low fertility or their 
distance from market, only return the cost of 
cultivation, leaving no surplus ^ whatever to go 

i Adam Smith says : " The most desert moors in Norway 
and Scotland produce some sort of pasture for cattle, of 
which the milk and the increase are always more than suffi- 
cient, not only to maintain all the labor necessary for tend- 
ing them and to pay the ordinary profit to the farmer or 
owner of the herd or flock, but to afford some small rent to 
the landlord." 

Eicardo doubts this, believing that "in every country, 
from the rudest to the most refined, there is land of such a 
quality that it cannot yield a produce more than sufficiently 
valuable to replace the stock employed upon it, together 
with the profits ordinary and usual in that country." 

Eicardo is probably right, though the matter is of no 
consequence, any way, inasmuch as the rent of Scottish or 
Norwegian "desert moors" is so small, per acre, as to 
constitute the economical minimum. 



74 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

to the proprietor of the land as rent. You can 
only make an intelligible statement of Eicardo's 
doctrine by starting with the existence of no- 
rent lands, since the Eicardian formula measures 
rent upwards from the no-rent line. 

Yet here M. Bastiat sends Brother Jonathan 
out to Arkansas, — a region which forty years 
ago stood in the relation to the markets of the 
world in which Montana and Idaho now stand, 
— a region where, by his own supposition, un- 
cultivated and unappropriated lands lie on every 
side ; and here, in this very position, on lands 
which are precisely the no-rent lands of the 
Eicardian formula, he makes Brother Jonathan 
claim a price for his produce above the cost of 
production, on the ground that the English and 
French economists have assured him that he 
is entitled to it on account of the original and 
indestructible properties of the soil. Again, he 
makes Brother Jonathan claim a rent above 
the interest of his investment, upon the author- 
ity of " Eicardo and Proudhon," and still again 
makes the Arkansas settler claim, for the same 
reason, a selling price in excess of the value of 
his improvements ; and all this, while the sim- 
ple, unmistakable fact is that, according to the 
doctrine which he is misrepresenting, the lands 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 75 

in question bear neither rent nor price, aside 
from the condition of an actual investment of 
capital, and the produce raised thereon must be 
sold to repay only the cost of production. Such 
is M. Bastiat's contribution to the philosophy 
of land and its rent ! 

CAEEY. 

The economic doctrine of rent encountered a 
more formidable antagonist in Mr. Henry C. 
Carey, of Philadelphia, who in his work enti- 
tled ''Political Economy," published m 1837, 
attacked Eicardo with arguments which he sub- 
sequently elaborated in his work entitled " The 
Past, Present, and Future," published in 1848. 
I shall quote indiscriminately from Mr. Carey's 
two works, the only difference between the au- 
thor's views, as developed in the interval of the 
two publications, being, as stated by himself,^ 
that in 1837 he was convinced that the theory 
of Eicardo was "not universally true," while, 
at the later date, he felt assured that it was 
"universally false." 

Let us proceed to test the validity of argu- 
ments which lead to a conclusion so mo- 
mentous. 

1 In the " Unity of Law." 



76 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Mr. Carey's first argument is founded on a 
"comparison of the cost and value of existing 
landed capital/' to use liis own phraseology; 
and will be found in the chapter of that title 
in his " Political Economy," and in his chapter, 
"Man and Land," in the work of 1848. 

"There is not," he asserts, "throughout the 
United States, a county, township, town, or city, 
that would sell for cost; or one whose rents 
are equal to the interest upon the labor and 
capital expended." ^ And he elsewhere draws 
what he regards as the logical inference from 
this alleged fact: "If we show that the land 
heretofore appropriated is not only not worth 
as much labor as it has cost to produce it in 
its present condition, but that it could not be 
reproduced by the labor that its present value 
would purchase, it will be obvious to the reader 
that its whole value is due to that which has 
been applied to its improvement." ^ 

Now, it appears to me that not only is this 
not "obvious," but that something very like 
an Irish bull is contained in this demonstration 
of a great " law " by which the harmony of all 
human interests is proposed to be established. 

1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 60. 

2 Political Economy, vol. i. p. 102. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 77 

The trouble with Mr. Carey's argument is its 
superabundance of proof. The effect is much 
the same as that which sometimes results from 
the superabundance of powder in charging a 
gun. 

Had Mr. Carey been able to show that, in 
any case taken, a county, township, town, or 
city was worth exactly as much in labor as 
it had cost, the coincidence of amounts could 
at least have suggested, if it did not create a 
proper presumption to that effect, that the 
labor expended was the cause of the value ex- 
isting; but when Mr. Carey, with a view to 
proving his very important proposition, asserts 
that any farm and any collection of farms has 
cost more, often far more, than it is worth, he 
simply affords another instance of that 

"Vaulting ambition which o'erleaps itself, 
And falls on the other side." 

Suppose the present value of a piece of land 
to be represented by 100 units, while the value 
of the labor it has cost to " produce " the farms 
found thereon, is represented hf 125. Now, 
says Mr. Carey, inasmuch as the land is not 
worth more than 100, while the labor invested 
in it was worth 125, it is clear that nothing but 
the labor has entered to give value to the land ! 



78 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

But how SO ? What has become of the 25 
which was in excess of the 100 ? Lost, says 
Mr. Carey, since, " as labor is improved in its 
quality by the aid of improved instruments, 
all previously accumulated capital tends to fall 
below its cost, in labor." ^ 

Ah ! but if that 25 can be lost and has been 
lost, how can you show that another 25 has 
not been lost, and still another 25, through the 
operation of the same cause ? How can you 
prove that the 100 of the present value of the 
land is due, in any part whatever, to the 125 of 
the value of the labor in the past? 

John Smith's barn has been broken into, over 
night, by a burglar who sawed a hole through 
the door to effect his entrance. Mr. Henry 
Carey, in the interest of justice, appears next 
morning among the excited throng of neigh- 
bors, and produces a board taken from James 
Brown's woodshed, which, though not corre- 
sponding to the guilty hole in size or shape, is 
yet large enough, as he explains, to allow just 
such a piece "to be cut out of it, thus conclu- 
sively proving James Brown to have been the 
robber of John Smith's barn ! 

Mr. Eicardo, upon a statement of reasons 

1 Political Economy, vol. 1. p. 35. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 79 

which in their cogency and vigor exact an 
almost painful assent from every well-ordered 
mind, demonstrates that the value, at any time, 
of any piece of improved land is made up of 
two elements, — one representing, in capitalized 
form, the sum of its natural advantages, for pro- 
ductive purposes, over the least favored piece of 
land (whether less favored by reason of natural 
infertility, difficulty of cultivation, or distance) 
contributing to the supply of the same market 
at the same time; the other representing the 
present advantages, for productive purposes, 
acquired by the land in view, through applica- 
tions of labor and capital in the past. 

Mr. Carey, having established statistically, to 
his own satisfaction, that the value of the 
labor and capital so applied exceeds, even 
greatly exceeds, the present value of all culti- 
vated lands, deems that he has demonstrated 
that the first element of Eicardo cannot enter at 
all into the value of such lands. How, indeed, 
can it, when there is no room for it, when 
the subject is already full and more than fitlW^ 

1 Let me reproduce Mr. Carey's words, already quoted : 
"There is not, throughout the United States, a county, 
township, town, or city that would sell for cost ; or one 
whose rents are equal to the interest upon the labor and 
capital expended." 



80 LAND AND ITS EENT, 

More than full : all, there is the rub ! Noth- 
ing can be more than full, and if there is a 
surplus in the value of the labor and capi- 
tal applied to the land, above the present 
value of the land itself, it follows inevitably 
that some of that labor and capital have, so far 
as the present value of the land is concerned, 
been lost ; but if so much has been lost, why 
not more ? and if more, why may not Mr. Ei- 
cardo's first element enter, after all ? 

And this is the vaunted refutation of Eicar- 
do's law of rent ! 

An argument that breaks down thus, under 
the slightest strain of hostile pressure, cannot 
be worth further notice on its own account; 
yet we may find matter of not a little economi- 
cal interest in following out the question here 
raised, as to the relation between what Mr. 
Carey calls the cost of producing farms and 
the value of farms when " produced." 

1st. To begin with, all the statements which 
are made regarding the amount so invested in 
any country or district are based on compara- 
tively little information. The statistical data 
are few and meagre, even for making estimates. 
Accomplished statisticians, long accustomed to 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 81 

deal with computations relating to agriculture, 
like Mr. Frederick Purdy,. Mr. Eobert Giffen, 
Professor Thorold Kogers, or Sir James Caird, 
would scarcely presume to claim even approxi- 
mate accuracy for any estimates they might 
make regarding the amount of labor involved 
in bringing even a limited agricultural region 
into its present state of productiveness. 

2d. Again, wholly in addition to the difficulty 
encountered in estimating the amount of labor 
involved in bringing a district to its present 
state of productiveness, would be the difficulty 
of computing the money value of that labor. 
While some great works of improvement are 
effected by bodies of hired laborers working 
through the year or through the agricultural 
season, most farm improvements are effected 
in the off season, when the wages of hired 
labor are very low, — perhaps only one half 
what they would be at another period of the 
year ; and probably the greater part are effected 
by the labor of the owner or occupier of the 
land and his family, in fragments of the day 
which would not otherwise be utilized, or in 
portions of the year when little or nothing of 
the current work of the farm can be done. 
Tn a word, much, very much, of the agri- 
6 



82 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

cultural improvements of a country like the 
United States, at least, represents no cost at all, 
in the sense that if the labor power exerted had 
not been expended in this way, it would not 
have been put to any economic use. 

3d. It goes almost without saying that the 
element of interest can properly be introduced 
into such computations only in respect to a 
very small proportion of the agricultural in- 
vestments of capital. 

In general, where capital is applied to agri- 
culture, it is in the expectation of an immedi- 
ate improvement of the productive power of 
the land, the annual increase of the produce 
being relied upon to furnish, at least the 
annual interest upon the investment, so that, 
speaking broadly, in any comparison between 
the cost and the value of landed property, only 
the first cost of the improvements effected 
should be set against the ultimate value added 
thereby. 

There are cases, of course, where capital is 
applied to the land in the view alone of a dis- 
tant increase of value. Here, within moderate 
limits of time, the inclusion of interest in the 
computation is not unreasonable. But even 
here, and even within comparatively brief 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 83 

periods, the application of the principle of 
geometric progression in the form of com- 
pound interest is of very doubtful propriety. 
Geometrical increase is rarely attained and 
never long maintained in things human. Con- 
templating an actual instance of geometrical 
increase within the field of industry, the most 
unreasonable expectation which can be formed 
concerning it, is that it will continue. That it 
should continue long, is not so much unlikely 
as impossible. 

Sir Archibald Alison, in his discussion of the 
British Sinking Fund, states that " a penny laid 
out at compound interest at the birth of our 
Saviour would in the year 1775 have amounted 
to a solid mass of gold eighteen hundred times 
the whole weight of the globe." 

So, doubtless, it might be shown that the 
value of Adam's first day's work in the Gar- 
den, properly compounded during six thousand 
years, would amount to more than the present 
value of all the lands of the world, and conse- 
quently that all the work that has been done 
since, in bringing the soil under cultivation, has 
merely been thrown away ! 

The incredibility of geometric increase 
through any considerable period of time can- 



84 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

not be too strongly impressed upon the stu- 
dent of economics. The produce of a single 
acre of wheat, sown over and over, for four- 
teen years, would cover all the solid land on 
this planet. The spawn of certain fish would 
suffice in even fewer years, if reproduction 
went on in geometrical progression, to fill to 
the brim the basin of every pond, lake, river, 
sea, and ocean. 

Hence we see the utter inconsequence of 
computations relating to human afi'airs into 
which compound interest is allowed to enter, 
except in strict subordination to common- 
sense. Probably there is no way in which a 
man can so quickly and so conclusively show 
himself unfit to be listened to, as by appeal- 
ing to geometrical progression for the proof of 
an economical or social theory. 

4th. But the consideration of greatest impor- 
tance in computing the cost of ''producing" 
farms is that, in general, agricultural improve- 
ments are compensated, and are expected to be 
compensated, in great measure, upon the prin- 
ciple of those annuities in which a certain 
number of annual payments both yield due in- 
terest on the purchase money and extinguish 
the capital itself, as when a man for $1,000 (on 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 85 

which the normal interest would be $50 or $60) 
purchases the right to receive $120 a year for 
a certain term, with no claim on the principal 
thereafter. 

Now, is this so, or is it not ? Let us satisfy 
our minds on this point ; for if the proposition 
just now stated is correct, it disposes effectu- 
ally of the argument against the economic 
doctrine of rent derived from the fact of ex- 
penditures in " producing " farms. 

That this proposition is correct is, I think, 
proved conclusively by the fact that there are 
few classes of improvements known to agricul- 
ture which a tenant for 33 years will not make 
at his own expense, notwithstanding the cer- 
tainty that he will cease to enjoy the benefit 
of them at the expiry of his lease. Even a very 
much shorter period of enjoyment, as 21 years, 
or, as so commonly in Scotland, 19 years, may 
give the tenant time enough to get back the 
value of the most expensive improvements, if 
judiciously made. 

Do not the several considerations adduced, 
and especially the last, take away all the force 
of this labored argument against the doctrine 
of rent ? 

Indeed, I must say that it appears to me 



86 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

that the proper effect of the facts relating to 
the extent of land improvements in the past, 
instead of impairing the validity of the general 
body of orthodox economic doctrines, is really, 
when properly understood, to confirm them. 
Political economists have been wont to allege 
that two elements enter into the rental or the 
selling price of land, — one, rent proper, being 
compensation for the original and indestructi- 
ble properties of the soil ; the other, interest, 
being compensation for capital invested. Of 
these two, the economists have been wont to 
allege that the first, rent proper, tends to in- 
crease with the general advance of wealth 
and prosperity; the other, interest on landed 
improvements, like all forms of interest, tends 
to diminish under the same conditions. 

Now, of the two elements thus entering into 
nominal rents, one, we hiov:, is there, and we 
have something like a measure of its amount. 
If, of two fields equally near the market and 
equally accessible to cultivation, one will yield 
30 bushels of wheat per acre to the same appli- 
cation of labor and capital which from the 
other will produce but 20, then there is a nor- 
mal rent of 10 bushels an acre for the more 
fertile as compared with the less fertile field ; 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 87 

and any American would consider tlie proprie- 
tor as little better than a fool if, in leasing tlie 
former field, he did not get something near that 
amomit of rent for it. In the same way, if, of 
two equally fertile fields, each producing 30 
bushels to the acre, one is situated close by the 
market, while the other lies at a distance so 
great that the cost of transportation consumes 
one third the produce, then, again, there will 
be a normal rent of 10 bushels per acre for 
the nearer as compared with the more distant 
field ; and any American would have his own 
opmion of a landlord who, in leasing such a field, 
should not get pretty nearly that price for the 
advantages of its location. In some degree, 
greater or less according to the character and 
uistitutions of the people concerned, law, or 
custom, or personal good feeling may enter to 
cause some portion of the normal rent of land 
to be remitted by landlord to tenant;^ but 
none the less truly is it a fact, constant, certain, 
inexpugnable, that real rent, strictly economic 
rent, does enter into the actual rent or selling 
price of land in every community where self- 
interest is even the general principle which 
governs human actions. 

1 See pp. 48-51. 



0« LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Now, as it is a fact beyond question or cavil, 
that rents, composed of these two elements, 
in one or another proportion, have increased 
greatly and almost steadily in nearly all civil- 
ized communities throughout the past seventy- 
five years, at the least, the more the cavillers 
at Eicardo's doctrine adduce to show the mag- 
nitude of the amounts of labor and capital 
which have been in the past expended upon 
land, the more, as it strikes me, do they afford 
corroboration of the view of the economists 
that it is the tendency of interest to fall with 
the general advance of wealth and prosperity. 

But Mr. Carey was not satisfied with one 
refutation of Eicardo's law. He attempted 
and, to the satisfaction of his disciples, achieved, 
a second demonstration of its falsity. That this 
subsidiary argument against the doctrine of 
rent should have been for a moment admitted ; 
that, indeed, it was not exploded at once amid 
general ridicule, — affords a striking proof of the 
weakness and vagueness with which economic 
questions, especially those affecting the land, 
have been discussed. It is a great pity, from 
the point of view of one who enjoys contro- 
versy, that Mr. Eicardo had not lived long 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 89 

enough to deal with this audacious assailant of 
his law of rent. A very pretty case of dissec- 
tion was lost through Mr. Eicardo's untimely 
death. I give Mr. Carey's argument in his 
own language. 

" It will," he says/ " be perceived that the 
whole system is based upon the assertion of 
the existence of a single fact, namely, that, in the 
commencement of cultivation, when population 
is small and land consequently abundant, the 
soils capable of yielding the largest return to 
any given quantity of labor alone are cultivated. 

"' That fact exists, or it does not. If it has 
no existence, the system falls to the ground. 
That it does not exist, that it never has existed in 
any country whatsoever, and that it is contrary to 
the nature of things that it should have existed, 
or can exist, we propose noiu to show. 

" We shall commence," he says, " our ex- 
amination with the United States. Their first 
settlement is recent ; and, the work being still 
in progress, we can readily trace the settler and 
mark his course of operation. If we find him 
invariably occupying the high and thin lands 
requiring little clearing and no drainage, those 
which can yield but a small return to labor, 
1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 23. 



90 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

and as invariably travelling down the hills and 
clearing and draining the lower and richer 
lands, as population and wealth increase, then 
will the theory we have offered be confirmed 
by practice, — American practice, at least. 

"If, however, we can thence follow him 
into Mexico and through South America, into 
Britain, and through France, Germany, Italy, 
Greece, and Egypt, into Asia and Australia, and 
show that such has been his invariable course of 
action, then may it be believed that when pop- 
ulation is small and land consequently abun- 
dant, the work of cultivation is, and always 
must be, commenced upon the poorer soils; 
that, with the growth of population and wealth, 
other soils, yielding a larger return to labor, 
are always brought into activity, with a con- 
stantly increasing return to the labor expended 
upon them." 

I will not say, with Koscher, that Mr. Carey's 
lengthy exposition is "rank with inexact sci- 
ence and unhistorical history." It does not 
matter a particle, so far as the validity of 
Eicardo's doctrine is concerned, whether Mr. 
Carey has correctly apprehended or grossly 
misapprehended the facts of human history, 
in the respect under consideration. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTPJNE OF EENT. 91 

Let it be conceded that the order of settle- 
ment in all new countries is that which Mr. 
Carey has indicated, — the new-comers taking up 
light, dry, sandy soils, which will yield a quick 
return to the labor of the colonists, aided by 
their scanty capitals ; and that it is only when 
wealth has been in some measure accumulated, 
after the first severe struggle to maintam ex- 
istence, that deeper and richer, but cold and 
wet soils are opened, the forests cleared, the 
swamps, rich with the vegetable mould of cen- 
turies, dramed. What, pray, does all this prove, 
so far as the doctrme under consideration is 
concerned ? It is absolutely indifferent to the 
matter at issue. 

It is true that Eicardo assumed, for the pur- 
pose of illustrating his doctrine, that the soils 
first cultivated, within any considerable coun- 
try, were those most productive. It also ap- 
pears from the context, that Mr. Eicardo really 
supposed that this was the historical order of 
occupation. Yet the economic law of rent has 
reference alone to the lands under cultivation 
at the same time ; and would have precisely as 
much validity if everything which ]\Ir. Carey 
has contended for, regarding the actual order 
of settlement and cultivation, were conceded, 



92 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

as if the hypothesis of Eicardo had been histori- 
cally accurate. 

Thus, let us revert for a moment to the illus- 
tration offered, in the preceding chapter, of the 
origin of rent. We there assumed the existence 
of four tracts of different degrees of fertility, 
with population so increasing as to send culti- 
vation down from the 24-bushel tract to the 
22-bushel tract, thence down to the 20-bushel 
tract, and so on ; showing how rent emerged 
at the first descent of cultivation, and how 
rents were readjusted at every rise or fall of 
the margin, or, as I prefer to call it, the lower 
limit, of cultivation. But the operation of the 
principle of self-interest in dealing with the 
land would be precisely the same, if, instead of 
a community, small at first, growing slowly in 
numbers and thus coming to occupy the four 
tracts successively, we were to suppose that a 
tribe numerous enough to require the cultivation 
of all four tracts at once, were to move upon the 
land. It would still be true that any member 
of the tribe could as well afford to pay 6 bush- 
els rent for the 24-bushel tract as occupy a lot 
of the 18-bushel land for nothing, or cultivate 
a portion of the 22-bushel tract at a rent of 
4 bushels. All the incidents we have described 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 93 

would occur upon one hypothesis exactly as 
upon the other. 

But you will ask : Is it really possible that 
Mr. Carey could have made so great a blunder ? 
Is there not some mistake about this ? Are 
you fairly representing him ? 

I answer : I have represented Mr. Carey with 
perfect fairness ; have repeated his own words, 
and commented upon them in the very mean- 
ing which a hundred repetitions show that 
Mr. Carey intended they should bear. 

The fact is, while Mr. Carey claimed to have, 
by this argument, refuted Eicardo's law of 
rent, and while that claim has been echoed 
from every side by his admirers, what Mr. 
Carey is here attacking is not Eicardo's law 
of rent, at all, but a deduction, true or false, 
from Eicardo's law of rent taken in conjunction 
with Malthus's law of population. 

Mr. Malthus attempted to prove, positively, 
that mankind will increase, even to their own 
hurt. Mr. Eicardo showed, purely hypothetic 
cally, what must happen if by increase of popu- 
lation cultivation be driven down to inferior 
soils. 

Hereupon the economists, generally, who ac- 
cept the doctrines both of Eicardo and of Mai- 



94 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

thus, have asserted that there is, in all com- 
munities, a practically irresistible tendency to 
an increase of population which will surely 
drive cultivation down to lower and still lower 
soils, with the result of a smaller and still 
smaller per capita product, yielding a scantier 
and still scantier subsistence to the members 
of the community. But this is not Eicardo's 
law of rent, which would hold true of a com- 
munity slowly diminishing in numbers from 
generation to generation (contrary to Malthus's 
law of population), and, by consequence, with- 
drawing, little by little, from the worst lands 
under cultivation, and thus increasing the per 
capita product. 

I have said that the complete establishment 
of Carey's historical order would not affect the 
validity of Eicardo's law of rent; and that, 
therefore, one might, for argument's sake, con- 
cede the accuracy of the narrative concerning 
the early settlement of Europe, Asia, and 
America, which occupies so large a portion of 
Mr. Carey's treatises, without surrendering even 
an outwork of the Eicardian doctrine. 

But while the historical order of settlement 
is thus of no consequence as affecting the eco- 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 95 

nomic law of rent, it must be admitted that 
very important economic consequences would 
follow the establishment of Mr. Carey's propo- 
sition that " the work of cultivation is and 
always must be commenced upon the poorer 
soils ; that, with the growth of population and 
wealth, other soils yielding a larger return to 
labor are always brought into activity ; " or, as 
he elsewhere expresses it, that the settler in- 
variaUy travels down the hills, clearing and 
draining the lower and richer lands, as popula- 
tion and wealth increase. 

l^Tow, as we are about to hold Mr. Carey 
accountable for this sweeping proposition, let 
there be no question that these expressions 
fairly represent the general drift of his argu- 
ment. Of this, no one familiar with his volumi- 
nous writings will entertain a doubt. Mr. Carey 
asserts not only the unreality, but the impossi- 
bihty, of the assumed fact that the increase of 
population sends cultivation down to inferior 
soils, in terms no less strong than these : It does 
not exist ; it never has existed in any country 
whatsoever ; it is contrary to the nature of 
things that it should have existed or can 
exist. 

What are the economic consequences which. 



96 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

as we have said, would follow the establish- 
ment of Mr. Carey's proposition ? These : 
that, instead of the increase of population 
lowering the margin of cultivation, and thus 
enhancing the aggregate body of rents,^ it 
would be shown to have the effect, by stimulat- 
ing the cultivation of better lands, to throw out 
the poorer (the first cultivated soils), and thus 
to raise the lower limit of cultivation, and thus 
at once to diminish the share of the produce 
going as rent to the landlord, and to increase 
the average produce, per capita, of the com- 
munity. Eents will still be determined by the 
Ricardian formula ; but the importance of rent 
as a factor in the distribution of wealth will be 
diminished. 

In view of the importance of these conse- 
quences, let us proceed to examine Mr. Carey's 
sweeping assertions regarding the actual order 
of settlement and occupation, for the purposes 
of agriculture. Let us see whether this history 
be indeed historical or not. 

In the first place, we note that Mr. Carey's 
detailed accounts relate, in the main, either to 
the settlement and cultivation of countries in 
ages when military necessities were a con- 

1 See pp. 53-55. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 97 

trolling force, or else to the very earliest stages 
of settlement and cultivation of the land, under 
circumstances which make the needs of im- 
mediate subsistence peculiarly urgent, as in the 
new States of the American Union, eighty, 
sixty, forty years ago. 

It would take more time than we have at 
command, even were the game worth the can- 
dle, to go through the history of the settlement 
of Britain, Italy, Greece, Germany, and other 
ancient countries, and attempt to analyze the 
influences which determined the selection of 
lands for habitation and cultivation. When 
we contrast the sites of nearly all ancient and 
mediseval cities, built upon the towering rock, 
with the utterly indefensible sites of our mod- 
ern cities, we can well understand that not 
economical but political and military exigencies 
may have given a strong preference to high and 
rugged ground, even for agriculture, in the days 
of almost universal warfare. The crops, in- 
deed, raised on such ground would neither be 
so ample, nor obtained with so little effort and 
sacrifice, as those which might have been raised 
in the fertile valleys below, but they would 
have been in a less degree subject to be swept 
away by the forays of armed bands. 
7 



98 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Fortunately, we do not need to enter into an 
analysis involving so much time and labor, and 
perplexed by so many uncertainties regarding 
the facts with which we should have to deal. If 
the forces which in those days determined pop- 
ulation to high and poor soils were exclusively 
or even predominantly economic forces, we 
shall not fail to find them operating to control 
the occupation of new countries in these piping 
times of general peace. Let us then consider 
the course of settlement in the United States. 
Mr. Carey himself expresses his preference for 
investigation in this field. " Their first settle- 
ment," he says, "is recent, and, the work being 
still in progress, we can readily trace the settler, 
and mark his course of operation." ^ 

And, to further narrow the field, let us con- 
fine our view to the State of Ohio. This State 
is as favorable as any to Mr. Carey's theory. 
"The early settlers," he says, "of Ohio, In- 
diana, and Illinois uniformly selected the higher 
grounds, leaving the richer lands for their suc- 
cessors." 2 

1 Past, Present, and Future, p. 24. 

2 Past, Present, and Future, p. 32. Indeed, Ohio affords 
a much better opportunity for exhibiting the operation of 
economic forces than either of the other States named, inas- 
much as it is more generally wooded, has a greater diversity 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 99 

Now let US take this case up and push it. 
If Mr. Carey has justly generalized the facts of 
the settlement of this great free State, he is 
entitled to much praise. 

The settlement of Ohio may be said to have 
been in progress all the time between 1802, 
when its inhabitants were fewer than 50,000, 
and 1832, when its population had reached 
1,000,000 ; in progress in this sense, that not 
until the latter date had settlers found their 
way into every corner and county of the new 
State beyond the AUeghanies. 

Now let it be conceded that throughout this 
period Mr. Carey's statement regarding the 
course of occupation holds good, substantially. 
I say, substantially, because to justify the as- 
sertion that the settlers "uniformly" selected 
the higher grounds would require a vastly 
greater amount of particular and local knowl- 
edge regarding the territory of Ohio than any 
one man ever possessed. 

How much, then, would there be in this fact, 
admitted for the sake of argument, which should 
be in contravention of the economic doctrine of 

of surface, and a larger proportion of rocky ground, than 
either Indiana or Illinois, which are purely prairie States, of 
great uniformity of surface and of soil. 



100 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

rent ? These early settlers of Ohio were, in the 
first instance, necessarily controlled in their " lo- 
cation " by considerations relating to the trans- 
portation of their products and to communication 
with the settlements they had left behind. 
Now, advantages of situation, as we have be- 
fore seen, enter just as fully into the net pro- 
ductiveness of any tract of land, according to 
Eicardo's doctrine, as advantages arising from 
superior fertility. Even in illustrating the ori- 
gin of rent, in our first chapter, we assumed the 
existence of a, very productive tract, situated at 
so great a distance that it would not be oc- 
cupied until cultivation had been driven to 
descend through several successive stages with- 
in the territory immediately surrounding the 
market. 

But, secondly, the early settlers of Ohio were 
largely compelled by the immediate exigencies 
of pioneer life to do something different from 
that which would have been the most economi- 
cal had they possessed an ample store of neces- 
saries and of the utensils and materials of 
industry. New-comers must needs do, not what 
they would, but what they can ; they must 
raise a quick crop, by little labor ; and it is 
natural enough that they should generally seek 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 101 

the side-hill, which is self-drained, and the open 
country, which does not require clearing, and 
the thin, dry soil, which gives a speedy, though 
not a large return. 

They still seek that land which will be most 
productive under the circumstances in which 
they find themselves placed ; for, as Professor 
Johnston has well said, that which would be 
rich land for a rich man may be poor land 
for a poor man. 

But the question I wish now to raise is, 
whether, when the first exigencies of pioneer 
life were passed, when some store had been 
accumulated, when population had become 
sufficiently dense to allow a reasonable degree 
of co-operation in labor, when time had been 
afforded to lay out roads and bridges and to 
perfect the means of transportation, when the 
capabilities and resources of the land had be- 
come thoroughly known, — whether then it 
remained true that cultivators in Ohio neg- 
lected the best soils for those of an inferior 
quality ? 

If not, the fabric so laboriously reared for 
assaulting the stronghold of the economists 
tumbles to the ground, of its own weight. 
How much does it matter that the people of 



102 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

Ohio, while they were first spreading loosely 
over the State, took up lands as Mr. Carey 
says they did, unless it can be proved, or at 
least a strong presumption can be established, 
that they continued to take up poorer soils, in 
preference to the best ? Mr. Carey asserts that 
the hypothetical order of settlement is " uni- 
versally false ; " that is, it is false as applied 
not to one but to all stages of the history of 
any community. As this matter is important, 
let us formulate it somewhat rigidly. 

Let us suppose the possibly cultivable lands 
of Ohio to form seven distinct grades, 1 to 7, 
'No. 1 being the poorest, No. 7 the richest. 
Let us divide the economic life of Ohio, be- 
ginning in 1802 and ending — when? into 
seven generations, with continually increasing 
population. 

Now, unless Mr. Carey is grossly mistaken, 
generation No. 1, the first settlers, will take 
up lands No. 1, the poorest of all ; generation 
No. 2 will take up lands No. 2, the next to the 
poorest; generation No. 3 will take up lands 
No. 3, and so on. 

This, or something very like it, must take 
place, or Mr. Carey's " law " breaks down ; for 
should generation No. 3, say, have the pre- 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 103 

sumption to take up lands No. 6, and genera- 
tion No. 4 be thereby encouraged to take up 
lands No. 1, why then generation No. 5 will 
perforce be compelled to take up lands No. 5, 
that is, lands poorer than those which had been 
brought m by the two generations preceding, 
while generation No. 6 will be driven to take 
up lands No. 4, far down on the scale of fer- 
tility ; and generation No. 7, the flower of civi- 
lization, will actually have to " decline upon " 
lands No. 3, which, according to Mr. Carey, 
generation No. 3 should, in conscience, have 
taken up. In other words, we should have 
cultivation driven down to inferior soils, a 
state of things respecting which Mr. Carey 
declares that it not only never has existed in 
any country whatsoever, but that it is contrary 
to the nature of things that it should have 
existed or can exist. 

In view of such possible results, what an 
appalling responsibility rests upon the people 
of any generation in the matter of not taking 
up any better land than they ought ! In the 
first place, think what a degree of virtue it 
requires, that they should deliberately deny 
themselves the enjoyment of the really best 
land around them, in order that the coming 



104 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

generations, with increasing numbers, slionld 
have the privilege of first occupying these, as 
Mr. Carey says they must do ! Even more 
remarkable than this, think of the degree of 
intelligence that is required to point out to 
the men of any generation just the share of 
the lands of the State which Mr. Carey's theory 
will permit them to occupy, they being neces- 
sarily ignorant as to what the future popula- 
tion of the State is to be, or through how many 
generations or centuries the increase of popu- 
lation upon the territory is to be continued ! 

But let us return to Ohio. We have seen 
what is required to make Mr. Carey's " his- 
torical law " true. How far do the probabili- 
ties of the case favor the rigid application of 
that law throughout the settlement of this 
State ? 

We may believe that there were, in Ohio, 
in 1832, when the population was 1,000,000, 
about 4,000,000 acres of improved land in 
farms. By 1850, when the population had 
risen to 2,000,000, these 4,000,000 acres had.be- 
come 10,000,000. Did the addition thus made 
to the enclosed and improved lands of the State 
include a fair proportion of the best lands 
within its limits, or were the new lands, also, 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF KENT. 105 

tliin, dry, sandy soils, only not quite so poor as 
those brought in between 1802 and 1832, — 
soils giving little root to grasses or to grain, 
but raising a small crop easily and quickly ? 
Unless the latter was the case, Mr. Carey's 
great historical law becomes little better than 
arrant nonsense. 

There is a popular belief throughout the 
Eastern States of this Union, that, in the eigh- 
teen years covered by this period, — 1832-50, — 
there was an immense amount of "clearing" 
done in Ohio; and the virtues of the "pio- 
neer's axe" have been celebrated in song and 
story. Is this all a mistake ? Or, if the peo- 
ple of Ohio really did cut down the prime- 
val timber over thousands of square miles, did 
they, as they ought, take pains to cut down 
only timber which grew over comparatively 
poor soils, so as not to interfere with the 
rights vested in unborn generations by Mr. 
Carey's "law"? 

Imagine Abraham Garfield, after reading Mr. 
Carey's " Political Economy," going into the 
woods, with his stalwart sons, axe on shoulder. 
He stoops down, gathers a sample of the soil, 
and after a patient examination rises with a 
sigh, and exclaims : " No, boys, it won't do for 



106 LA.ND AND ITS RENT. 

US to cut down this bit of timber. The land 
underneath is too good for the like of us. The 
population of the county will not, you know, 
attain its maximum until 2184, and if we 
should, now that it is only the year of grace 
1847, open this ground for cultivation, those 
who come after us might be obliged to resort 
to soils which would not be of as good a 
quality, and this Mr. Carey assures us can 
never be. So let us move on. We will strike 
into that lot across the ridge, where we know 
the soil is just thin and dry and mean enough 
for you and me." 

Between 1850 and 1880, again, the popula- 
tion of Ohio has increased to 3,000,000, and 
the number of acres of improved lands has 
risen to 18,000,000. Are the 8,000,000 acres 
improved for the first time during this period, 
all, or substantially all, of a quality next above 
those previously brought in, but still below 
the best ? Has this added territory embraced 
lands only a little less thin, a little less shal- 
low, a little less dry, than those occupied in 
1850 ? Has this vast annexation still left the 
really good lands of the State uncultivated, 
only to be improved when the population shall 
reach 5,000,000 or 10,000,000 ? 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF KENT. 107 

I do not care to contest Mr. Carey's theory 
that the first generation of settlers in any 
American State have spread themselves loosely 
over the soil, picking out the spots which offered 
the greatest facilities for the transportation of 
produce and for communication with the older 
settlements, perhaps giving a certain preference 
to naturally cleared, self-drained land. But 
that the second generation, in any American 
State, north of Mason and Dixon's line at least, 
have shrunk from the real problem of their 
economic life, have failed to grapple with the 
obstacles which withstood their acquisition of 
the richest resources of nature, have neglected 
to subdue the soil, the best soil they could 
find, with axe and spade, strenuously, manfully, 
with incessant toil, with unflinchinoj courage, 
T, for one, do not believe ; and Mr. Carey has 
not adduced a scintilla of evidence to prove a 
proposition so contrary to all we have ever 
learned of the character and life of the West- 
ern people. It would require a detailed local 
knowledge of at least 50,000 farms, including 
the time and manner in which every field 
therein came to be enclosed and cultivated, to 
establish such a proposition regarding the State 
of Ohio alone. In the absence of any such sta- 



108 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

tistical demonstration, common fame and com- 
mon sense give the flattest contradiction to this 
monstrous hypothesis. 

With this we may leave Mr. Carey's argu- 
ment against the Eicardian doctrine of rent. 
The person who denies the truth of the Eicar- 
dian law in effect declares that men habitually 
rent highly fertile and comparatively infertile 
fields, rich corn lands and mountain pastures, 
at the same price ; that men habitually rent 
lands near a market at the same price with 
lands the most distant from the market. If he 
does not mean to assert this, he does not in the 
smallest degree traverse the path of Eicardo's 
majestic argument. If he does mean to assert 
this, he puts himself on the level of the person 
who should assert that men habitually sell 2 
bushels or 10 bushels of wheat at one and the 
same price. 

In a word, Eicardo's doctrine can no more 
be impugned than the sun in heaven, and those 
who mouth at it simply show that they do not 
know what it was Eicardo taught. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF EENT. 109 



LEROY-BEAULIEU. 

The latest attack on the economic doctrine 
of rent, that of M. Leroy-Beaulieu,i need not 
detain us long. 

I say, attack upon the economic doctrine 
of rent ; and yet M. Leroy-Beaulieu does not 
in terms attack that doctrine. Indeed, this 
distinguished economist and statistician is not 
capable of denying the theoretical truth of the 
doctrine of Eicardo. He admits that the fact 
of differences in natural advantages, whether 
of fertility or of situation, among the fields con- 
tributing to the supply of the market, must 
leave a surplus above the cost of production in 
the hands of the cultivators of all but the 
lowest grade of soils. 

M. Leroy-Beaulieu's attack upon the doc- 
trine of rent takes the form, not of questioning 
its theoretical validity, but of disparaging its 
present and prospective importance in the dis- 
tribution of wealth. Did M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
confine himself to a careful statistical measure- 
ment of that part of the rents actually paid by 
tenants to landlords which is due to the natural 
advantages of the soil, whether of climate or 

1 La Repartition des Pdchesses. Paris, 1882. 



110 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

location ; and were the effect of his investiga- 
tion merely to reduce somewhat, or even to 
reduce very considerably, the importance gen- 
erally assigned to rent proper as a factor in the 
distribution of wealth, — I should not presume 
to speak of him as making an attack upon the 
Eicardian doctrine. But inasmuch as M. Leroy- 
Beaulieu, while admittmg the theoretical valid- 
ity of that doctrine, carries his disparagement 
of its practical importance to such an extreme as 
to lead him to declare that rent — real economic 
rent — has ceased to have any significance in the 
modern distribution of wealth, having already 
sunk to an economical minimum, and is on the 
point of disappearing altogether, I conceive that 
we cannot regard his discussion of the subject 
as anything less, or anything other, than an 
attack upon the economic doctrine of rent. 

" Subjected," says this writer, " to an atten- 
tive examination, the doctrine of Eicardo ap- 
pears to us to have, to-day, almost no practical 
importance." ^ Elsewhere he says that, of the 
produce of the soil, it is only a parcelle infime ^ 
which goes to the proprietor. The English 
school of economists, he declares, have exagger- 

1 La Repartition des Eicliesses, p. 103. 

2 i^i(j^ p, 113, 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. Ill 

ated singidierement the pretended privilege of 
the rural proprietor; "to speak the 'truth, it is 
not even an exaggeration, hut a veritable trav- 
esty of facts." ^ 

For the support of his views regarding the 
narrowness of the influence exerted by rent 
upon the distribution of wealth, this writer 
relies chiefly upon the argument derived from 
what Mr. Carey calls the cost of producing 
farms. The French economist is not only 
much more moderate in his assertions than the 
American economist, whom he follows on this 
line, but he brings to the discussion a far higher 
degree of statistical ability, and draws upon a 
much wider range of statistical data. He does 
not, indeed, reach any such sweeping conclu- 
sion as that there is no township or parish the 
present value of whose lands would repay the 
labor which has been expended upon them ; yet, 
after a wide-reaching discussion of all the facts 
at his command, he issues with this result, 
that the enhancement of rents in England, 
France, and Belgium during the last seventy- 
five years — or, say, since the peace of 1815 — 
has not amounted to a sum greatly in excess 
of a fair interest return upon the expenditures 

1 La Eepartition des Richesses, pp. 115, 116. 



112 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

directed towards the improvement of the soil 
within the same period. 

Now, the force of this argument has already 
been sufficiently discussed while we were deal- 
ing with Mr. Carey's attack on Eicardo. I 
have sought to show that expenditures upon 
land are, in very large part, made in the expec- 
tation that they will be compensated by the 
increased yield of a comparatively short term 
of years. It might have been difficult to prove 
this, were the cultivator of the soil always the- 
proprietor ; but when we find by far the greater 
part of the lands of England, and no inconsid- 
erable part of those of France and Belgium, in 
the hands of tenants, and when we see that 
those tenants, holding under leases for 11, 19, 
21, or possibly 33 years, as a maximum, freely 
make, in their own interest, nearly every class 
of improvements known to agriculture,^ we have 
what seems to me a sufficient refutation of the 
argument by which it is sought to disparage 
the importance of rent, — real economic rent, — 
the compensation that is paid for the natural 

1 Even in cities, costly residences, stores, and warehouses 
are often built upon leased land, to go entire to the proprie- 
tor of the soil at the expiry of the lease, the tenant looking 
to secure his own interest by the profits of occupation during 
the brief interval. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 113 

advantages of the soil, through magnifying the 
vokime of expenditures made for its im^Drove- 
ment. 

But M. Leroy-Beaulieu is not content with 
the indirect method of establishing the insig- 
nificance of rent, — the method, that is, which 
seeks to show that, of the two elements enter- 
ing into the compensation for the use of land, 
rent must be little because interest is so great. 
He undertakes to establish the same conclusion, 
directly and affirmatively, by showing that mod- 
ern facilities of transportation have reduced 
the tax or toll levied upon the aggregate pro- 
duce of the land in favor of the proprietor class, 
to the extent of practically extinguishing rent, 
— rent proper. 

His line of argument is this : Modern facili- 
ties of transportation have substituted, for the 
distinction between cultivated lands as more 
or less fertile, the distinction between cultivated 
lands as more or less remote from market. No 
community is now confined, in obtainmg its 
subsistence, to the lands surrounding it, as was 
formerly the case in a high degree. The Eo- 
mans and the Athenians, indeed, brought grain 
from the Black Sea, Egypt, and Africa; but 
they would have starved had they depended 
8 



114 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

for any essential part of their supply upon 
lands as distant as Australia or America. Any 
Englishman may now eat the wheat of Min- 
nesota or Dakota ; any German may, if Bis- 
marck will let him, eat the hams of Cincinnati 
or Chicacfo. Steam navis^ation has enabled the 
whole world to resort to the world's best soils, 
and eat of the produce thereof at the cost of 
raising it plus only the cost of transport, and 
this cost of transport is steadily diminishing 
under the force of invention and discovery. 

M. Leroy-Beaulieu's discussion of this sub- 
ject is very interesting, and, except as he deals 
with questions of degree, is sound and just. 
The principle he adduces is incontestable. In 
our statement and illustration of the origin of 
rent, we purposely placed one of the tracts 
dealt with at a great distance, and inquired as 
to the effects of successive reductions in the 
cost of transportation, not only upon the culti- 
vation of that tract itself, but upon the cultiva- 
tion of the home tracts, and upon the rentals 
they would severally bear. 

But when M. Leroy-Beauheu declares that 
the cost of transportation has already been 
reduced so low that rent has become nearly if 
not quite a genuine economic minimum, he 



ATTACKS UPOX THE DOCTEINE OF RENT. 115 

utterly transcends the limits of toleration and 
deservedly forfeits the confidence of his reader. 

Fortunately we need no elaborate or extended 
argument to prove him hopelessly in the wrong. 
Turn we to England. Here we find a steady 
increase in the price of animal food throughout 
the last thirty or forty years, notwithstanding 
free trade and improved navigation ; that price 
" rising," as Sir James Caird states, " in a few 
years from fivepence to sevenpence, ninepence, 
and even a shilling, a pound." ^ 

Under any cii^cumstances. Sir James remarks, 
the English producer has the advantage of at 
least a penny, in the pound of live meat, 
arising from the cost and risk of transporta- 
tion, over his transatlantic competitor, an ad- 
vantage equal to £4 on an average ox.^ " Of 
this natural advantage nothing can deprive 
him ; and with this he may rest content." 

" Fresh meat from America," he continues, 
'' from the costly methods necessary to pre- 
serve it, will, on the produce of an acre, cost 

1 The Landed Interest and tlie Price of Land, pp. 2, 3. 

2 Mr. Alfred Pell states the average freight of live cattle 
from America at £7 per head. "I have heard," he writes, 
" that the price has since been reduced to £5. It was as 
high as £12 in the first instance, and they have carried cat- 
tle, I believe, as low as 50 shillings." 



116 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

equal to 40 sliillings, for transport to tliis 
country." JsTow, 40 shillings an acre is equiv- 
alent to the average rent of land in England, 
— a rent with which, Sir James remarks, the 
British land-owner may well rest content. In 
regard to the cereal and other vegetable crops, 
the same high authority testifies that the cost 
of transporting from California, the Black Sea, 
or India, the chief sources of supply, a quan- 
tity of wheat equal to the produce of an acre, 
"is seldom less, and often more than 40 shil- 
lings. " ^ " Hay and straw," he adds, " are so bulky 
that they can only bear the cost of carriage 
from near Continental ports." Certainly this 
does not look like a statistical minimum. 
Forty shillings ($12) an acre is a very pretty 
rent, neither to be despised by the landlord 
nor to be neglected by the economist in dis- 
cussing the distribution of wealth. 

And if we inquire how the selling price of 
land has been affected by modern facilities for 
transport and intercommunication, we have 
this remarkable statement from tlje same writer, 
certainly the most capable agricultural observer 

1 See, also, the address of Sir James Caird, as President 
of the Statistical Society, 1881, in the Journal of the So- 
ciety. 



% 

ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 117 

in Great Britain, where since 1851 his authority 
has been undisputed, namely, that the capital 
wealth of the owners of landed property has 
been increased, in Great Britain and Ireland, by 
£331,000,000 in 20 years, "at a cost to them 
which probably has not exceeded £60,000,000." 

Here we have, according to this eminent 
economist, a net increase of the selling price of 
the lands of Great Britain and Ireland, after 
deduction of the cost of improvements, of not 
less than £270,000,000, or $1,350,000,000. 

It is true that during the five years since 
Sir James Caird wrote these words, the in- 
creasing severity of American competition ^ has 
very considerably reduced the rental value of 
the lands of the United Kingdom ; but there 
is no reason to suppose that this effect has 
proceeded far enough to neutralize the gain of 
the twenty years preceding, notwithstanding 
all those improvements in the means and agen- 
cies of transport and intercommunication upon 
which M. Leroy-Beaulieu dwells with so much 
emphasis and eloquence. 

I do npt know that I could give a better 
idea, in a single line, of the strained way in 
which M. Leroy-Beaulieu pursues his object of 

1 See ante, pp. 23-26. 



118 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

demonstrating that economic rent has ceased 
to be a factor in the distribution of wealth, 
than by saying that he seriously refers to the 
lamentable exx^eriences of Mr. Martin Chuzzle- 
wit, of the late firm of Chuzzlewit and Tapley, 
Architects and Land Surveyors, as an instance 
in point to prove the native valuelessness of 
land and the greatness of the pains and perils 
which attend its occupation and cultivation ! 
Many a hundred thousand of American agri- 
culturists, who, ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago, 
" went West," taking up government land un- 
der the Homestead Act, who, every year since, 
have lived with their families on the land, con- 
suming at least twice as much of animal and 
vegetable food as falls to the lot of the English, 
French, or German peasant, and whose lands 
are now worth, through the mere growth of 
the country, $10, $30, or $50 an acre, could 
reassure the philanthropic heart of M. Leroy- 
Beaulieu. 

In like manner, this really admirable econo- 
mist and statistician, turning his eyes upon 
Europe, disparages the natural advantages of 
the proprietor of the soil in that region by 
reference to the pests and plagues which beset 
the vuie, the growing wheat, the fruiting tree. 



ATTACKS UPON THE DOCTRINE OF RENT. 119 

After dwelling with profound commiseration 
upon the ravages of the infamous phylloxera, 
the malignant rotrytis mfestans, and the al- 
together pernicious doriphera, he exclaims, with 
what some might mistake for bathos : " Were 
Eicardo to return to earth, would he, in the 
presence of these evils which afflict the agricul- 
ture of the elder communities, still hisist that 
the proprietor of land is a privileged being, the 
favorite of civilization, who sees his own profits 
continually increase without his efforts, and 
who gathers the larger share of the fruits of 
social progress." ^ 

If I might venture to reply for Mr. Eicardo, 
in his absence, I would say : Were that very 
clear-sighted and hard-headed person to revisit 
the glimpses of the moon, and take a survey of 
modern industrial society, it is probable that, 
in view of the fact that fair wheat lands are 
worth $300 in England, $50 in Illinois, and 
$5 in Dakota, he would still be disposed to 
hold that the possession of land near the cen- 
tres of civilization and the marts of trade, if not 
v/holly without drawbacks, is, on the whole, 
phylloxera, doriphera, and rotrytis infestans 
to the contrary notwithstanding, a decidedly 

1 La Eepartition des Eicliesses, p. 102. 



120 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

good thing. With M. Leroy-Beaulieu's vatici- 
nations respecting the advances to be hereafter 
made in the arts and agencies of transportation, 
we are not called to concern ourselves. All 
this may come to pass, and, with Keeley Motor 
stock at par, rents may sink to zero. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 121 



CHAPTER III. 

RECENT ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 

As stated in the opening chapter, I shall not, 
in this connection, take note of works which 
attack property in general, but shall confine 
myself to those writers who admit property 
in the products of labor, of which they deem 
the individual appropriation of land to be an 
invasion. 

MILL. 

The later essays and speeches of Mr. Stuart 
Mill, dealing with the land, are well known to 
students of economics. 

In 1870 Mr. Mill became President of the 
Land Tenure Reform Association. 

As its title indicates, and as its published 
programme announced, the purpose of the As- 
sociation was to secure a reform, and not the 
abolition, of landed property ; but inasmuch 



122 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

as tlie reform which the Association deemed 
imperative cut off so much of the incidents 
of ownership as fairly to raise the question 
whether enough would be left to make owner- 
ship itself thereafter desirable, and, indeed, 
whether the result would not be to bring the 
greater part of the land into the hands of the 
State as owner, through the relinquishment of 
the land by its former owners, upon the terms 
contained in the programme of the Associa- 
tion, this movement is fairly to be ranked 
among the Attacks upon Landed Property 
made in our day. 

Although, as a measure of so-called reform, 
Mr. Mill took up this question so late in life^ 
all the principles, whether of economics or of 
political equity, to which he appealed at this 
period, are distinctly laid down in his work 
of 1848. 

" The essential principle of property being 
to assure to all persons what they have pro- 
duced by their labor and accumulated by their 
abstinence, this principle cannot apply to what 
is not the produce of labor, the raw material 
of the earth. If the land derived its produc- 
tive power wholly from nature and not at all 
from industry, or if there were any means of 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPEETY. 123 

discriminating what is derived from each source, 
it not only would not be necessary, but it 
would be the height of injustice, to let the gift 
of nature be engrossed by a few. . . . 

"But, though land is not the produce of 
industry, most of its valuable qualities are so. 
Labor is not only requisite for using, but 
almost equally so for fashioning, the instru- 
ment. In many cases, even when cleared, its 
productiveness is wholly the effect of labor 
and art. . . . 

" These are the reasons which form the justi- 
fication, in an economical point of view, of 
property in land. It is seen that they are 
only valid in so far as the proprietor of land is 
its improver. . . . 

" When the sacredness of property is talked 
of, it should always be remembered that this 
sacredness does not belong in the same degree 
to landed property. No* man made the land. 
It is the original inheritance of the whole 
species. Public reasons exist for its being ap- 
propriated. But if those reasons lost their 
force, the thing would be unjust. . . . 

" Landed property is felt, even by those most 
tenacious of its rights, to be a different thing 
from other property ; and where the bulk of the 



124 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

community have been disinlierited of tlieir share 
of it, and it has become the exclusive attribute 
of a small minority, men have generally tried 
to reconcile it, at least in theory, to their sense 
of justice, by endeavoring to attach duties to 
it, and erecting it into a sort of magistracy, 
either moral or legal. But if the State is at 
liberty to treat the possessors of land as public 
functionaries, it is only going one step further 
to say that it is at liberty to discard them. 
The claim of the land-owners to the land is 
altogether subordinate to the general policy of 
the State. The principle of property gives 
them no right to the land, but only a right to 
compensation for whatever portion of their in- 
terest in land it may be the policy of the State 
to deprive them of. To that their claim is in- 
defeasible!' 

In 1870, as stated, Mr. Mill had so far ad- 
vanced in his views regarding the private own- 
ership of land, that he became President of 
the Land Tenure Eeform Association, one " of 
whose proposed objects was : " To claim for 
the benefit of the State the Interception by 
Taxation of the Future Unearned Increase of 
the Eent of Land (so far as the same can be 
ascertained), or a great part of that increase, 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPERTY. 125 

which is continually taking place, without any 
effort or outlay by the proprietors, merely 
through the growth of population and wealth ; 
reserving to owners the option of relinquish- 
ing their property to the State at the market 
value which it may have acquired at the time 
when this principle may be adopted by the 
Legislature." 

This project was advocated by Mr. Mill in 
arguments of which the following paragraphs 
contain the essence : — 

" There are some things, which, if allowed to 
be articles of commerce at all, cannot be pre- 
vented from being monopolized articles. On 
all such the State has an acknowledged right to 
limit the profits. . . . Now, land is one of these 
natural monopolies. The demand for it in 
every prosperous country is constantly rising, 
while the land itself is susceptible of but little 
increase. All such articles, when indispensa- 
ble to human existence, tend irresistibly to rise 
in price, with the progress of wealth and popu- 
lation. The rise of the value of land and of 
the incomes of land-owners during the present 
century has been enormous. Part of it, un- 
doubtedly, has been due to agricultural improve- 
ments and the expenditure of capital on the 



126 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

soil. Mucli of it, however, is merely tlie result 
of the increased demand for agricultural pro- 
ducts and for building land, and would have 
taken place even though no money had been 
laid out in increasing the productive powers of 
the soil. Such outlay, moreover, as there has 
been, was made, in a great proportion of cases, 
not by the landlord, but by the tenant,^ who 
may or may not have been indemnified by a 
temporary enjoyment of the profits ; but, sooner 
or later, the increased return produced by the 
tenant's capital, has become an unearned addi- 
tion to the income of the landlord. 

" The Society are of opinion that, in allowing 
the land to become private property, the State 
ought to have reserved to itself this accession 
of income; and that lapse of time does not 
extinguish this right, whatever claim to com- 
pensation it may establish in favor of the land- 
owners. . . . 

" The Society do not propose to disturb the 
land-owners in their past acquisitions ; but 
they assert the right of the State to all such 
accessions in the future. 

"Whatever value the land may have ac- 
quired at the time when the principle they 
1 See ante, pp. 84, 85. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 127 

contend for sliall obtain the assent of Parlia- 
ment, tliey do not propose to interfere with. 
If, rather than submit to be specially taxed on 
the future increase of his rent, the land-owner 
prefer to relinquish his land to the State, the 
Society are willing that the State should pay 
for it at its selling value. 

"In this manner, that increase of wealth 
which now flows into the coffers of private 
persons from the mere progress of society, and 
not from their own merits or sacrifices, will 
be gradually, and in an increasing proportion, 
diverted from them to the nation as a whole, 
from whose collective exertions and sacrifices 
it really proceeds." For the carrying out of 
this scheme, Mr. Mill says: "A valuation of 
all the land in the country would be made 
in the first instance, and a registration estab- 
lished of subsequent improvements made by 
the landlord." 

Looking at this statement of principles in 
the light of our previous discussions, what do 
we find here asserted ? 

1st. There is the fullest recognition of Ei- 
cardo's law of rent. It is asserted, in direct 
contradiction of Messrs. Carey and Bastiat, that 
the rental or sellmg price of land, in general, 



128 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

consists of two elements, — one being the own- 
er's compensation for tlie capital invested in 
improvements, whether above or below the sur- 
face; the other being a remuneration exacted 
for the use of a natural agent of production, 
the inherent properties of the soil. 

2d. It is asserted that the actual amount of 
wealth, if not the share of the aggregate pro- 
duct of land, labor, and capital, thus going, 
as economic rent, to the landlord, is not only 
of enormous importance in the existing state 
of society, but tends strongly to increase with 
increase of wealth and population. 

This view of the present and prospective 
consequence of rent, in the distribution of 
wealth, which differs toto cmlo from that of 
M. Leroy-Beaulieu, leads Mr. Mill to inquire 
into the nature of the claim of the land-owner, 
with the result which we have read. 

That individual ownership of land is of com- 
paratively recent institution, the soil having 
formerly been deemed the common possession 
of cultivating communities, held together by a 
real or constructive tie of kinship ; that, even 
when the private ownership of land was insti- 
tuted, rights of property were coupled with 
political and military duties and fiscal obliga- 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. . 129 

tions, which constituted no inconsiderable com- 
pensation to the comumnity for the loss of its 
interest in the land ; and, finally, that these 
political and mihtary duties and fiscal obliga- 
tions have been thrown off by the land-owning 
class, through the exertion of their superior 
power and influence in the formation of public 
policies and in the enactment of laws, with- 
out any adequate commutation thereof, — these 
things appear to me too well established to 
admit of question. From the point of view of 
political equity, I know of no answer which 
can successfully be made to Mr. Mill's argu- 
ment. In my judgment it stands, on that side, 
inexpugnable. 

It is from the point of view, however, of 
political expediency — using that term in its 
largest sense, to include consideration of the 
economic effects of the proposed change — that 
the programme of the Land Tenure Keform 
Association must be approved or condemned. 
Mr. Mill himself, in his work of 1848, pro- 
fessed, as in the paragraphs which have been 
quoted, amenability to this rule ; nor do I un- 
derstand him as seeking, in his later publica- 
tions on the land question, to escape therefrom. 
On the contrary, while the primal motive of 
9 



130 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

the proposed reform is to secure a more equi- 
table apportionment of the products of land, 
capital, and labor, he argues not only that the 
change will, in the first instance, bring no 
shock to production, but that, instead of dimin- 
ishing in any direction the impulse towards the 
creation of values, it will, in its ultimate re- 
sult, secure a more harmonious distribution, a 
wiser consumption, and by consequence, in the 
next economic generation, an increased produc- 
tion of wealth. 

What, then, should be said of Mr. Mill's 
proposition, as a scheme of practical reform ? 

In the first place, we note that, in saving the 
rights of existing property-holders, Mr. Mill, 
in common honesty, relinquishes the claim of 
the community upon all that increase in the 
rental or selling price of land which shall have 
accompanied the increase of population and the 
development of industry, up to the time when 
the scheme shall be definitely adopted by legal 
authority. Of all the probable mischief attrib- 
utable to what Mr. Mill regards as an ill-advised 
surrender of land to individuals, a large part 
possibly, not improbably the larger part, has 
already been irreparably done. It is, then. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 131 

only to future increase in the value of land 
that this scheme would apply. Such a limita- 
tion of its scope would not only greatly reduce 
the benefits to be derived by the State, benefits 
for the sake of which great perils are to be 
risked, but would wholly deprive the scheme 
of all significance whatever, for good at least, 
in many communities where rent has already 
reached its maximum and tends rather to de- 
cline than to increase, under the severity of 
competition from newer or more fortunate 
lands. 

But, secondly, governments could not under 
this scheme realize by any means the whole 
even of the future mcrease of rents. This is 
admitted by Mr. Mill, in his defence of the 
programme of the Land Tenure Eeform Associa- 
tion. " A large margin," he says, " should be 
allowed for possible miscalculation." Yet such 
an allowance would by just so much dimmish 
the inducement for the State to assert its rights 
to the lands now held by individuals. And 
that this margin must, as Mr. Mill says, be 
large, that it must be very large indeed, 
I think we shall see, if we take into consid- 
eration the difficulties which attend the valua- 
tion of improvements effected in the soil. I 



132 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

endeavored in the last chapter to convey an 
impression of the difficulties attending this val- 
uation. ^ Here we have Mr. Carey declaring 
that there is not a county, a township, a town, 
or a city in the United States of his day, 
which was worth what it had cost to produce 
it. Here we have a statistician of eminence, 
like M. Leroy-Beaulieu, prepared to prove 
that the present rental of land in England, 
France, or Belgium constitutes no more than 
a fair interest on the investment made by the 
owners. 

I trust I showed to the reader's satisfaction 
that a mistaken principle underlies all compu- 
tations of " the cost of producing farms ; " and 
that many, if not most, agricultural improve- 
ments are made in the expectation of an in- 
crease of the produce, the enjoyment of which 
for a term of years, greater or less, answers both 
for interest on the investment and for the 
principal of the investment itself ; but how 
improvements should be classified for this pur- 
pose, what should be the term of years for any 
one class of investments, how the first cost 
should be computed, how the State should 
check and prove the owner's accounts of work 

1 See ante,, pp. 80-82. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 133 

done, how secure that the work charged should 
be real, effective work, such as would be given 
to the plantmg and harvestmg of the annual 
crop, of which the State would take no account, 
— it must appear, on the first suggestion, that 
these questions would involve infinite perplex- 
ity,^ with one of two results certain to ensue : 
either, with just and fair-minded assessors, the 
State would, in the readjustment of values for 
the purposes of Mr. Mill's scheme, lose every 
time and at every point, since the assessors 
could not know the facts upon which to base 
a confident decision, while the owner would be 
in a position to represent the circumstances 
in such a way as always to leave a balance in 
his own favor ; or else, with assessors not anx- 
iously desirous to do right, perhaps even dis- 
posed to assert the interests of the State to 
extremity, owners would, in great numbers, 
avail themselves of their right to rehnquish 
their lands to the State, at its first registered 
valuation, with consequences which we shall 
consider hereafter. 

3d. But we have not yet enumerated all 

1 On the difficulty of distinguishing and classifying agri- 
cultural improvements, see Mr. Newmarch's paper, in the 
Journal of the Statistical Society, for 1871, p. 488. 



134 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

the difficulties which would attend the exe- 
cution of this system of "Nationalizing the 
Land." 

Were every change of value in land, through- 
out the most extensive community, certain to 
be in the direction of a rise, some estates 
rising perhaps rapidly, others slowly, and oth- 
ers not at all, but none losing any part of their 
present value with the lapse of time, all the 
perplexities we have indicated would be en- 
countered by the State in asserting for itself 
the benefits of the "unearned increment of 
land." 

But a further and a still greater difficulty 
would stand in the way of this scheme, namely, 
the fact of declining values in landed property. 

That the amount going to the owner of the 
soil in rent has, taking all progressive countries 
together, risen greatly through the past gener- 
ation, the past century, the past three centu- 
ries, or five, seems too clear to require proof. 
That it is still rising, I believe, in spite of 
M. Leroy-Beaulieu's attempted disproof. That 
it is likely, most likely, to rise through a con- 
siderable future, though no one can conjecture 
how fast or how far, I entertain no doubt. But 
this general rise of rents has always been in 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 135 

tlie past, and is morally certain to be in tlie 
future, accompanied by the phenomenon of 
values falling over considerable areas. This 
is seen on every hand, even throughout flour- 
ishing communities. 

Now it is evident, beyond challenge or ques- 
tion by any honest man, that in a readjustment 
of the relations of land, made primarily to meet 
the demands of political equity, the State, if it 
will claim the benefit of all gain resulting from 
general causes affecting the numbers and pro- 
ductive power of the community, and thus due 
neither to the merits nor to the sacrifices of own- 
ers, is bound to make good all losses resulting 
from a decline of demand due to causes which 
are of a general nature, and are thus attributable 
to no fault or neglect on the part of owners. 
If he who remains, in name, the proprietor of 
land is not to be allowed to reap any gain 
not brought about by his own exertions, he has 
a good claim to be saved harmless from loss 
which no effort of his could have averted. 
Heads, I win ; tails, you lose, is no fair game ; 
it is not a game at which the State can in 
safety or decency play with its own citizens. 

4th. And now we have to note still another 
source of loss to the State in its effort to re- 



136 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

sume the virtual owersliip of land, namely, 
that, in appraising the losses to owners occur- 
ring in the case of depreciating property, the 
State would be bound to allow " a large mar- 
gin for miscalculation," corresponding to that 
adopted in the valuation of property rising in 
value. This would constitute another deduc- 
tion from the theoretical advantages of this 
project. 

Whether, after the State had indemnified all 
owners of depreciating property, after it had 
conceded all the deductions which might be 
necessary to prevent large bodies of land from 
coming upon its hands, at the official valuation, 
there would be enough left, as a source of rev- 
enue, to make it worth while to undertake a 
measure so revolutionary and perilous in its 
nature, may well be doubted. 

That, in the event the public interest in the 
matter of landed property were to be asserted 
in such a way as to bring large numbers of 
estates into the hands of public officials, the 
treasury paying the owners therefor the original 
registered valuation, the State could so manage 
such properties, either by occupation, by rental, 
or by sale, as to get its money back, even with- 
out interest, even after much delay and great 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PIIOPERTY. 137 

fiscal embarrassment, what man, who knows 
anything of the history of State property, 
beheves ? 

Professor Emile de Laveleye has indeed, in 
this connection, referred to the experience of 
the early Village Communities of Europe as 
proof that successful cultivation without 
abuse of the soil is possible under collective 
ownership. But consider the vast differences 
in the conditions ! The agriculture of those 
days was wonderfully simple and rude. The 
communities were small, highly localized, thor- 
oughly integrated bodies. Each man cultivated 
his temporary allotment under the eyes of his 
real or constructive kinsmen, subject to their 
daily and hourly criticism and control. Any- 
thing like abuse of the soil or neglect of the 
punctilious prescriptions relating to the enjoy- 
ment of the common property was a direct inva- 
sion of the rights of every other member of the 
community, who was in a position to know it 
and to resent it. Could the five hundred thou- 
sand residents of Manchester, the five million 
residents of London, exert any corresponding 
control of their individual interests in the farms 
of Kent, Hampshire, Lincoln, and the Lothians ? 
When, as by Mr. Mill's scheme, you make the 



138 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

unit of possession, not a village or a parish, 
but a nation ; when the actual cultivators be- 
come but a fraction of the community, the 
remaining members knowing little and caring 
less about the cultivation of the soil; when, 
instead of a population spread evenly over the 
land, you gather half the subjects of the 
realm into cities and towns ; when, moreover, 
the crops cultivated become numerous, and the 
methods of cultivation infinitely various and 
complicated, — then the conditions which made 
the occupation of the soil in common even tol- 
erable disappear. Indeed, Sir Henry Maine 
has shown reason for believing that, even with 
the simple agriculture of those early days, even 
under the very limited demands then made 
upon the soil, the organization of society into 
village communities was ineffective for produc- 
tive purposes ; and that it was from its lack of 
adaptation to the wants of an increasing popu- 
lation, that it was replaced by autocratically 
governed manorial groups of cultivators. 

The objection to common ownership of land, 
which arises from the liability to abuse and 
waste, disappears, of course, when building-lands 
and town sites are brought under considera- 
tion ; and so greatly is the problem simplified 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 139 

that Dr. Adolpli Wagner, the illustrious Profes- 
sor of Political Economy in the University of 
Berlin, has proposed that the municipalities 
should purchase all town property ,i in order 
to realize therefrom the progressive increase of 
values. 

I shall, however, assume that the disadvan- 
tages of the State or of a municipality turning 
itself into a great real-estate company will be 
sufficiently obvious not to require any extended 
discussion. Think what the civil service of a 
city like Boston, a State like Massachusetts, a 
nation like the United States, would become, 
if, instead of an annual pay-roll of a half mil- 
lion, or two millions, or thirty milhons, the 
control and manipulation of income to the 
amount of tens or hundreds of millions, of 
wealth to the amount of hundreds or thousands 
of millions, were to become the object of politi- 
cal intrigue, the spoil of political victory ! 

1 It is perhaps worth noting, that Professor Wagner's 
scheme, if practicable, would fail to satisfy all the equities of 
the case, since the growth of towns and cities is largely due 
to the "exertions and sacrifices" of the rural communities 
by which they are surrounded, and which would have a 
strong claim to be admitted to a participation in the "un- 
earned increment of land" situated in the towns and cities 
to which they thus contribute. 



140 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

The beginning of our national career found us 
in possession of a vast public domain, on which 
our earlier financiers looked as an important 
fiscal resource. A wiser policy, however, pre- 
vailed ; and although that original domain has 
been multiplied fourfold as the result of war 
or purchase, it has been almost as rapidly re- 
duced by alienations, all wise and patriotic 
statesmen agreeing, with almost perfect una- 
nimity, that no fiscal advantage that might 
accrue from holding the public lands as a 
source of revenue could be weighed against 
the interests to be secured by those lands 
becommg the individual property of actual 
cultivators. 

That a nation which deliberately adopted the 
policy of selling at a minimum price, and even 
of giving away to actual settlers, the lands 
which were already unqualifiedly public prop- 
erty, and which has never hesitated for a mo- 
ment in the pursuit of this policy, men of all 
classes and all parties agreeing thereto with sub- 
stantial unanimity, should undertake a scheme 
that at least borders upon confiscation, for the 
purpose of bringing under the control of the 
treasury lands which had become a private 
possession before the nation had an existence, 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 141 

is SO -unlikely that we need not waste time in 
arraying arguments against tlie proposition. 

GEORGE. 

We come now to the work of Mr. Henry 
George, entitled "Progress and Poverty," to 
which allusion was made in our opening 
chapter. 

Mr. George's attack upon Landed Property is 
twofold, — from the side of natural rights, and 
from the side of the economic interests of 
society. 

Let those who feel competent to the task 
answer Mr. George's eloquent plea in behalf of 
the natural and inalienable right of all indi- 
vidual members of the human race indiscrimi- 
nately to enter and enjoy at will each and 
every lot and parcel of land upon the globe, 
and every building which may have been or 
may hereafter be erected thereupon. ^ I profess 
no qualifications for the work, never having 
lived in a state of nature myself, but having 

1 " There is on earth no power which can rightfully make a 
grant of exclusive ownership in land. . . . Let the parch- 
ments be ever so many, or possession ever so long, natural jus- 
tice can recognize no right in one man to the possession and 
enjoyment of land, that is not equally the right of all his 
fellows." — Progress and Poverty. 



142 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

resided all my life in communities more or less 
civilized. In my humble judgment, only con- 
siderations of political expediency or of politi- 
cal equity are pertinent to discussions relating 
to the arrangements of human society. I shall 
therefore, venture to apply to Mr. George's 
assertions and proposals regarding the occupa- 
tion of the land purely economic tests, just 
as if all this fine talk about the rights of man ^ 
had been left out of his book. And this sub- 
jection of the question of the ownership of 
land to economic principles is, after all, not 
something to which Mr. George can consistently 
make objection : for he claims to write as an 
economist; he professes to be able to give a 
strictly economic reason for the faith that is in 
him ; he founds his system upon the economic 
doctrine of rent, as he understands it ; and he is 
severe upon writers who have preceded him, on 

1 " Though his titles have been acquiesced in by genera- 
tion after generation, to the landed estates of the Duke of 
"Westminster the poorest child that is born in London to- 
day has just as much right as has his eldest son. Though 
the sovereign people of the State of New York consent to 
the landed possessions of the Astors, the puniest infant that 
comes wailing into the world, in the squalidest room of the 
most miserable tenement house, becomes at that moment 
seized of an equal right with the millionnaires. " — Progress 
and Poverty. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 143 

account of their slips and lapses in the appli- 
cation of economic principles. First and fore- 
most, Mr. George is, if he knows himself, an 
economist. 

Let us, then, proceed to consider " Progress 
and Poverty," on this side. 

In the first place, it will not be needful ^ to 
enter into the arguments by which Mr. George 
seeks to establish the proposition that " wages 
are produced by the labor for which they are 
paid." Were this proposition false, we could 

1 Neither needful nor desirable. Nearly all of Mr. George's 
assailants have wasted their strength and breath in attacking 
the proposition expressed in the text, or in discussing the 
arguments Mr. George puts forward in refutation of the Mal- 
thusian doctrine of population. Witness the labored arti- 
cles in the January number of the Edinburgh and of the 
Quarterly Eeview. The fact is, neither Mr. George's view 
regarding the origin of wages nor his anti-Malthusianism is, 
in the slightest degree, of the essence of his doctrine. By 
placing these in his front, and procuring his enemies to 
assault them, Mr. George has evaded a direct attack upon 
his vital point, namely, his position regarding the impor- 
tance of rent as a factor in the distribution of wealth. To 
reach this it is not necessary to cross the quagmire into 
which Mr. George has drawn his heedless assailants, who 
have been completely " blown " before they reached the posi- 
tion upon which alone his system stands. Any one who will 
avoid this error may raid Mr. George's camp to his heart's 
content. 



144 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

concede him all the benefit to be derived from 
its use, and still disprove the main positions of 
his book ; but the proposition that " wages are 
produced by the labor for which they are paid," 
contains much truth, although the author's 
attempts to disparage the importance of the 
contributions to current production made by 
capital accumulated in the past involve a fear- 
ful straining of economic facts and economic 
conditions.^ So far, however, as this proposi- 
tion contains any truth, it is not, in the least 
degree, original with Mr. George. Professor 
Stanley Jevons in 1871 announced the doctrine 
that ''the wages of a working man are ulti- 
mately coincident with what he produces, after 
the deduction of rent, taxes, and the interest of 

1 As, for example, when in treating the function of cap- 
ital in production, he says, "Accumulated wealth seems to 
play just about such a part in relation to the social organ- 
ism as accumulated nutriment does to the physical organism," 
and adds, in illustration, "Some accumulated wealth is nec- 
essary, and to a certain extent it may be drawn upon in 
exigencies ; but the wealth produced by past generations 
can no more account for the consumption of the present, 
than the dinners he ate last year can supply a man with 
present strength.'' This work abounds in statements of 
an equal degree of extravagance, and doubtless herein 
lies the secret of the attraction it exerts upon ill- balanced 
minds. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 145 

capital," while in my own work of 1876 it 
was said that " wages are, in any philosophical 
view of the subject, paid out of the product of 
present industry, and hence production fur- 
nishes the true measure of wages." ^ 

Nor is it necessary to take time, as many of 
Mr. George's critics have done, for a discussion 
of Mr. George's attempted refutation of Mal- 
thus's doctrine of population. Here, again, we 
might concede to this writer all he claims, true 
or false, without giving him ground on which 
to establish the subsequent truly monstrous 
propositions of his book. There is absolutely 
nothing original in Mr. George's attack on Mal- 
thusianism, — the doctrine, namely, that popula- 
tion strongly tends to increase to its own hurt ; 
and we should use time that might be more prof- 
itably employed, were we to recite the thread- 
bare arguments of the opponents of that doctrine 
for no other reason than that Mr. George has 
chosen to make them a preface to his doctrine 
of rent. 

What is original in Mr. George's work is the 
enormous importance assigned^ to rent as an 

1 The same doctrine was contained in an article by the 
present writer in the North American Review of January, 
1875, and in an Address at Amherst College in 1874. 
10 



146 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

element in the distribution of wealth. Here 
Mr. George's admirers may rightfully claim for 
him all the credit of first discovery. No other 
writer, so far as I am aware, ever attributed to 
rent anything approaching ' the same degree of 
importance. 

We have seen Mr. Mill, weighed down by a 
sense of the injustice of allowing the large an- 
nual increment of the land to pass, unearned, 
to the landlord, propose that the State should 
assert the right of the community, as a whole, 
to this body of wealth; but Mr. Mill never 
dreamed of advancing the theory that rent nec- 
essarily, in the progress of society, absorbs the 
entire gain in productive power, and even more 
than that gain, leaving the laboring classes ac- 
tually worse off by reason of every succes- 
sive improvement in the arts or in the social 
order.i 

1 Mr. Mill does, indeed, assert that the working classes 
have failed to reap the greater part of the gain which should 
have accrued to them from the improvements and inventions 
of the past century ; but he attributes this mainly to their 
own improvidence, ignorance, or heedlessness, or to the un- 
due increase of population, or to social and legal wrongs, 
outside the tenure of land. Mr. George asserts that the 
private ownership of land deprives the laboring class of all 
share whatsoever in the fruits of social progress, altogether 
irrespective of increase of numbers, or of any failure to meet 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 147 

On the other hand, we have heard M. Leroy- 
Beaulieu, an economist and statistician of emi- 
nence, declare that rent — real, economic rent, 
as distinguished from the returns made to cap- 
ital invested in the soil — has actually ceased 
to be a factor in the distribution of wealth, has 
already sunk to an economic minimum, and 
will soon disappear altogether. 

If I may resort to a somewhat unpleasant 
physiological illustration, M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
declares that rent is no more than the merest 
mole upon the industrial body; Mr. Mill re- 
gards it as an open sore, a real, appreciable, 
and considerable drain upon the vitality of the 
state, which should be checked by stringent 
surgery and cautery. Mr. George looks upon 
rent as a cancerous evil, which, growing by 
what it feeds upon, draws into itself all the 
vital forces of the community, extending its 
deadly influence further and further every day, 
every day drawing nearer and nearer to the 
seat of life, with only one possible result, and 
that in no distant future. 

Eeduce rent, as an element in the distribu- 

the requirements of a true competition. He declares that 
this inheres, naturally, necessarily, and inevitably, in the 
economic conditions of the private ownership of the soil. 



148 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

tion of wealth, to the importance assigned it by 
M. Leroy-Beaulieu, and Mr. George's practical 
proposals would become simply ridiculous ; and 
probably Mr. George himself would see them 
to be so. 

Eeduce rent, as an element in the distribu- 
tion of wealth, to the importance assigned it by 
Mr. Mill, and Mr. George's work would be 
emptied of all novel significance. It would 
remain merely a passionate tract in advocacy of 
the proposals for nationalizing the land which 
were put forth by Mr. Mill and the Land 
Eeform Tenure Association in 1870. 

Here, then, right here, in the highly magni- 
fied importance assigned to rent as a factor in 
the distribution of wealth, we find all there is 
of Mr. George's work which has either original- 
ity or novelty. This is literally all the new 
matter there is in the book, in the view of any 
economic investigator. But this is Mr. George's 
own, in every sense of the term. If Mr. George 
is right here, he has discovered a principle of su- 
preme importance, the neglect of which should 
put every professional economist to the blush. 

Let us, then, confine ourselves to this view 
of the subject. 

In stating and discussing the views of Mr. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 149 

George, I shall seek to exercise the utmost fair- 
ness. I shall, as far as possible, give him the 
benefit of his own forms of expression, even at 
the expense of much space. I shall sometimes 
quote two, three, or even more statements of 
the same principle, in order that it may appear 
that I am not taking a controversial advantage 
of any inadvertence or extravagance in expres- 
sion. This is the more desirable, since some of 
Mr. George's assertions are so astonishing that 
a few repetitions really assist one in rising to 
the height of the occasion. I shall, however, 
take the liberty to introduce italics into my 
quotations from Mr. George, at my own dis- 
cretion. 

In the first place, I remark, negatively, that 
Mr. George does not attack property in general. 
He does not rail at capital, or impeach its claim 
to recompense. On the contrary, he vigorously 
asserts the "natural right" of the producer to the 
fruits of his exertions and sacrifices, whether 
he be laborer or capitalist ; and it is partly 
because, as he esteems it, private property in 
land constitutes an invasion of property in the 
product of labor, that he would bring about 
the state ownership, or common ownership, of 
land. 



150 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

In the second place, and also negatively, Mr. 
George is not an opponent of the Eicardian 
doctrine. The law of rent is, he says, "cor- 
rectly apprehended by the current political 
economy." 

Indeed, so far is he from being an opponent 
of the Eicardian doctrine, that it is in the un- 
heard-of and unthought-of extension which he 
gives to the scope of the principle of rent, that 
the essence of his teaching consists. 

Let us now proceed to state Mr. George's 
position affirmatively. As we have agreed, for 
the purposes of the present discussion,^ to con- 
cede the sufficiency of his refutation of the 
doctrine of Malthus, we will, for simplicity, 
follow Mr. George only through his analysis 
of the effects of rent acting upon stationary 
populations. 

This cannot fail to receive his assent, since 
he declares that "land, being held as private 
property, would produce in a stationary pop- 
ulation all the eifects attributed by the Mal- 
thusian doctrine to pressure of population." 

What, then, is Mr. George's position ? Just 

1 Only for the sake of the discussion. The writer is a 
thorough believer in the validity of the doctrine of Malthus 
as restated by Mr. Mill. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 151 

this : " Irrespective of the increase of population^ 
the effect of improvements in methods of produc- 
tion and exchange is to increase rent!' The 
proof of this proposition is as follows, in his 
own words : — 

"Demand is not a fixed quantity that in- 
creases only as population increases. In each 
individual it rises with his power of getting the 
things demanded. . . . 

"The amount of wealth produced is nowhere 
commensurate with the desire for wealth; and 
desire mounts with every additional opportu- 
nity for gratification. 

" This being the case, the effect of labor-saving 
improvements will be to increase the produc- 
tion of wealth. Now, for the production of 
wealth, two things are required, labor and 
land. Therefore the effect of labor-saving im- 
provements will be to extend the demand for 
land, and wherever the limit of the quality of 
land in use is reached, to bring into cultivation 
lands of less natural productiveness, or to extend 
cultivation on the same lands to a point of lower 
natural productiveness. And thus, while the 
primary effect of labor-saving improvements is 
to increase the power of labor, the secondary 
effect is to extend cultivation, and, where this 



152 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

lowers the margin of cultivation, to increase 
rent. . . . 

" Thus, where land is entirely appropriated, as 
in England, or where it is either appropriated 
or is capable of appropriation as rapidly as it 
is needed for use, as in the United States, the 
ultimate effect of labor-saving machinery or 
improvements is to increase rent, without in- 
creasing wages or interest. 

"It is important that this be fully under- 
stood, for it shows that effects attributed 
by current theories to increase of population 
are really due to the progress of invention, 
and explains the otherwise perplexing fact that 
labor-saving machinery everywhere fails to 
benefit laborers." 

And he concludes, after repeating and further 
illustrating this view of the effect of produc- 
tive improvements and inventions, with the 
following italicized proposition: "Wealth, in 
all its forms, being the product of labor applied 
to land, or the products of land, any increase 
in the power of labor, the demand for wealth 
being unsatisfied, will be utilized in procuring 
more wealth, and thus increase the demand for 
land." And so, to use his own phrase, labor 
cannot reap the benefits which advancing civi- 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 153 

lization brings, because they are " intercepted," ^ 
that is, intercepted by rent. 

1 Mr. George draws what he apparently deems a very ap- 
palling picture of the conceivable, if not possible, conse- 
quences of this subjection of labor and capital to the land. 
" As," he says, 'Sve can assign no limits to the progress of 
invention, neither can we assign any limits to the increase 
of rent, short of the whole produce. For, if labor-saving 
inventions went on until perfection ' was attained, and the 
necessity of labor in the production of wealth was entirely 
done away with, then everything that the earth could yield 
could be obtained without labor, and the margin of cultiva- 
tion would be extended to zero. Wages would be nothing, 
and interest would be nothing, while rent would take every- 
thing. For, the owners of the land being enabled without 
labor to obtain all the wealth that could be procured from 
nature, there would be no use for either labor or capital, and 
no possible way in which either could compel any share of 
the wealth produced." All this is said seriously, as if it 
were of some consequence. Yet one cannot help asking ; 
Well, what of it ? Why should there be any wages, if there 
were no labor? What are wages? Mr. George himself de- 
fines both labor and wages as follows : ' ' The term ' labor ' 
includes all human exertion in the production of wealth ; 
and wages, being that part of the produce which goes to 
labor, includes all reward for such exertion." 

Very good, as it is very familiar. But if a state of things 
were reached such as Mr. George contemplates, in which 
there were no labor, no exertion of human powers or facul- 
ties in the production of wealth, why, in the name of equity, 
should there be any wages, the reward for such exertion ? 

And if there were no capital, why should there be any in- 
terest, the recompense of capital ? What is capital ? Accord- 



154 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

That it may not be supposed that I am in 
any way misrepresenting Mr. George, or omit- 
ting any qualification of his propositions, I 
quote another extended paragraph, in his own 
words. 

" Land being necessary to labor, and being re- 
duced to private ownership, every increase in the 
productive power of labor but increases reiit, — 
the price that labor must pay for the opportu- 
nity to utilize its powers ; and thus all the ad- 
vantages gained by the march of progress go to 
the owners of land and luages do not increase. 
Wages cannot increase; for, the greater the 
earnings of labor, the greater the price that 
labor must pay out of its earnings for the op- 
portunity to make any earnings at all. The 
mere laborer has thus no more interest in the 
general advance of productive power than 
the Cuban slave has in advance in the price 
of sugar. And just as an advance in the price 
of sugar may make the condition of the slave 
worse, by inducing the master to drive him 

ing to Mr. George it is " only a part of wealth, — that part, 
namely, which is devoted to the aid of production." But if 
no wealth were to be devoted to production, as on Mr. 
George's supposition, then there would be no capital. If no 
capital, why any interest ? 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 155 

harder, so may the condition of the free laborer 
be povsitively, as well as relatively, changed for 
the worse by the increase in the productive 
power of his labor. For, begotten of the con- 
tinuous advance of rents, arises a speculative 
tendency which discounts the effect of future 
improvements by a still further advance of 
rent." 

The last sentence introduces Mr. George's 
second count in his arraignment of rent, as the 
great social criminal. 

Please carefully to note the point. The im- 
mediate and direct effect of any addition, from 
whatever source, to the productive power of 
labor, is to increase rents by just the same 
amount, so that nothing is left to go either 
into enhanced wages or enhanced profits, the 
landlord taking the entire increase, whatever 
that may be. 

But now another force enters, actually to 
deplete the already starving laborer. This is 
the speculative advance in land, owing to the 
expectation of further increments of value at 
the expense of the community. 

" We have," says Mr. George, " hitherto as- 
sumed, as is generally assumed in elucidations 
of the theory of rent, that the acUml margin of 



156 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

cultivation always coincides with what may be 
termed the necessary margin of cultivation, — 
that is to say, we have assumed that cultivation 
extends to less productive points only as it 
becomes necessary from the fact that natural 
opportunities are at the more productive points 
fully utilized. This, probably, is the case in 
stationary or very slowly progressing commu- 
nities ; but in rapidly progressing communities, 
where the swift and steady increase of rent 
gives confidence to calculations of further in- 
crease, it is not the case. In such commu- 
nities, the confident expectation of increased 
prices produces, to a greater or less extent, the 
effects of a combination among land-holders, 
and tends to the withholding of land from use, 
in expectation of higher prices, thus forcing the 
margin of cultivation farther than required by 
the necessities of production." 

But this is not the end of the mischief at- 
tending the private ownership of land. We 
have now the third and final count in this 
arraignment. The speculative holding of land, 
just described, becomes, in turn, the cause of 
incessant industrial disturbance, and of those 
great periodic convulsions of production and 
trade which involve the labormg classes, poor. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 157 

inert, and unapt to travel or to change of occu- 
pation, in the deepest distress. How can this 
be ? Mr. George is equal to the occasion. 

" Production," he says, in explanation of an 
assumed industrial crisis, " has somewhere been 
checked, and this reduction in the supply of 
some things has shown itself in cessation of de- 
mand for others, the check propagating itself 
through the whole framework of industry and 
exchange. Now, the industrial pyramid mani- 
festly rests on the land. 

" The primary and fundamental occupations, 
which create a demand for all others, are evi- 
dently those which extract wealth from nature, 
and hence, if v/e trace from one exchange point 
to another, and from one occupation to another, 
this check to production, which shows itself in 
decreased purchasing power, we must ultimately 
find it in some obstacle which checks labor in 
expending itself on land. 

" And that obstacle, it is clear, is the specu- 
lative advance in rent, or the value of land, 
whicli produces the same effects as (in fact, it 
is) a lock-out of labor and capital by land-own- 
ers. This check to production, beginning at 
the basis of interlaced industry, propagates it- 
self from exchange point to exchange point. 



158 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

cessation of supply becoming failure of demand, 
until, so to speak, the whole machine is thrown 
out of gear, and the spectacle is everywhere 
presented of labor going to waste while laborers 
suffer from want." 

This concludes Mr. George's arraignment of 
private property in land. If these successive 
counts can be sustained, he is fully borne out in 
his conclusion that " the necessary result of ma- 
terial progress — land being private property — 
is, no matter luliat the increase in loopulation, to 
force laborers to wages which give but a bare 
living;" or, as he elsewhere expresses it, that 
" material progress does not merely fail to re- 
lieve poverty, it actually produces it ; " or, again, 
that, " whatever be the increase of productive 
power, rent steadily tends to swallow up the 
gain and more than the gain ; " or, agam, that 
" the ownership of the land on which and from 
which a man must live, is virtually the owner- 
ship of the man himself, and in acknowledging 
the right of some individuals to the exclusive 
use and enjoyment of the earth, we condemn 
other individuals to slavery, as fully and as 
completely as though we had formally made 
them chattels." 

To a man who believed but a small fraction 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 159 

of this, the conclusion which Mr. George an- 
nounces at the close of the following paragraph 
would appear irresistible : — 

"As long as this institution exists, no in- 
crease in productive power can permanently 
benefit the masses, but, on the contrary, must 
tend to still further depress their condition. . . . 
Poverty deepens as wealth increases, and wages 
are forced down while productive power grows, 
because land, which is the source of all wealth 
and the field of all labor, is monopolized. To 
extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice 
commands they should be, the full earnings of 
the laborer, we must therefore substitute for 
the individual ownership of land a common 
ownership." 

I believe I have presented, in the foregoing 
extracts, every essential feature of Mr. George's 
economic system, without suppression or per- 
version. His practical recommendations for 
the carrying out of his proposal for the na- 
tionalization of the land cannot be politically 
very important, since matters of this sort are 
generally left to statesmen, not to economists ; 
and even should the abolition of private prop- 
erty be decreed at the approaching session of 
Congress, there is too much reason to fear that 



160 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Mr. George would not be called in to adjust 
the details of the scheme. Those recommenda- 
tions are, however, if not politically important, 
psychologically interesting, and serve to give an 
idea as to the kind of person this apostle of a 
regenerated humanity may be, and as to the 
sort of society in which he has been bred. 

" I do not," he says, " propose either to pur- 
chase or to confiscate private property in land. 
. . . Let the individuals who now hold it, still 
retain, if they want to, possession of what they 
are pleased to call their land. Let them con- 
tinue to call it tlieir land. Let them buy and 
sell and bequeath and devise it. We may 
safely leave them the shell, if we take the 
kernel. It is not necessary to confiscate land; 
it is only necessary to confiscate rent." 

"What I propose," he exclaims, in a fine 
glow of enthusiasm, " as the simple yet sov- 
ereign remedy, which will raise wages, increase 
the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, 
abolish poverty, give remunerative employment 
to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to hu- 
man powers, lessen crime, elevate morals and 
taste and intelligence, purify government, and 
carry civilization to yet nobler heights, is — 
to appropriate rent by taxation." 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 161 

Of course, the present owners of the land — 
many, perhaps most, of whom have, under the ex- 
press sanction and encouragement of the State, 
bought it, perhaps even from the State itself, 
paying the price into the treasury — will be 
compensated when their property or the entire 
value thereof shall thus be "confiscated" for 
public uses. Mr. George rejects the suggestion 
with indignation. He even pities Mr. Mill for 
having had the weakness to admit ^ the land- 
owner's claim to compensation : " Great as he 
was, and pure as he was, warm heart and noble 
mind, he never yet saw the true harmony of 
economic laws." 

But there are the improvements, urges Mr. 
George's reader, which have become blended 
with and inseparable from the soil. ''Very 
well," he cheerfully replies ; " then the title to 
the improvements becomes blended with the 
title to the land, the individual right is lost in 
the common right. . . . Nature does not pro- 
ceed from man, but man from nature ; and it 
is into the bosom of nature that he and all his 
works must return again." What a thing it is 
to be a philosopher, and see " the true harmony 
of economic laws " ! 

1 See ante, p. 24. 
11 



162 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Since such consequences, not only destructive 
of the established order of industrial society, 
but subversive also, it would seem, of ordinary 
honesty, are to be drawn from Mr. George's 
discovery of the enormous and previously un- 
suspected importance of rent as a factor in the 
distribution of wealth, let us somewhat care- 
fully analyze the arguments by which his prop- 
ositions under this head are established. 

Let us take up, in their inverse order, Mr. 
George's three capital propositions.^ And, first, 
how much is there in the view that commercial 
disturbance and industrial depression are due 
chiefly to the speculative holding of land ? 

That land, in its own degree, shares with 
other species of property in the speculative 
impulses of exchange, is a matter of course. 
Everybody knows it; no one ever thought of 
denying it. Mr. George makes no point against 
private property in land, however, unless he 
can show that it is, of all species of property, 

1 I do not insist upon the consideration, though, both rele- 
vant and important, in this connection, that whereas Mr. 
George's argument assumes that the rents paid by the mem- 
bers of society are the full economic rents under the Ricar- 
dian formula, those rents are, in fact, in most communities, 
greatly reduced by the operation of the forces indicated on 
pp. 42-51. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 163 

peculiarly the subject of speculative impulses. 
Now, this is so far from being either self-evi- 
dent or established by adequate induction, that 
the contrary is the general opinion of eco- 
nomic writers. Of all species of property, land, 
especially agricultural land, starts latest and 
stops earliest in any upward movement of 
prices, as induced, for instance, by a paper- 
money inflation, which perhaps affords the best 
opportunity for the study of purely speculative 
impulses. 

Of course, there are circumstances under 
which those impulses may especially attack 
land, and a wild " rig " may be run in the mar- 
ket for this commodity, as, at other times, in 
the market for government stocks, or mines, or 
railways, or Dutch tulips, or what not. 

A very striking instance of the possibilities 
of speculation in this direction is afforded by 
the history of land in California. The opening 
of the Pacific railways in 1868 aroused the most 
extravagant expectations of a rise in the value 
of land. Mr. George says, and perhaps truly, 
that lots in the outskirts of San Francisco " rose 
hundreds and thousands per cent," and a period 
of wild speculation ensued. Mr. George ap- 
pears to have been profoundly affected by his 



164 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

observation of this episode. What was purely 
local and accidental, he has magnified into a 
universal cause of speculation. 

" What," he remarks, " thus went on in Cali- 
fornia, went on in every progressive section of 
the Union ; " and this land speculation he 
makes the primary and principal cause of the 
panic of 1873. 

It is difficult to say what Mr. George, with 
his peculiar ideas, may regard as the progres- 
sive and what as the retrogressive or stationary 
sections of the Union; but throughout the 
regions which, between 1868 and 1873, com- 
prised more than two thirds of the accumu- 
lated wealth of the country, and did more than 
three fourths of its trading and more than five 
sixths of its manufacturing, agricultural land 
was not the subject of a speculative enhance- 
ment of values. On the contrary, the value of 
farms was, on the whole, depressed relatively to 
other objects of exchange, throughout the period 
when the catastrophe of 1873 was preparing. 

We now come to Mr. George's second count. 

The allegation that the enhancement of the 
value of land, above what should be regarded 
as the capitalized value of its present productive 
or income-yielding power, withdraws large bodies 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 165 

of land from cultivation, thus driving labor 
and capital to poorer and more distant soils, in 
order to secure the needed subsistence of the 
community can only be characterized, so far 
as all the agricultural ^ uses of land are con- 
cerned, as a baseless assumption, for which not 
a particle of proper statistical proof can be 
adduced, and which is directly contrary to the 
reason of the case. 

Because, forsooth, a man is holding a tract 
of land in the hope of a rise in its value years 
hence, does that constitute any reason why he 
should refuse to rent it, this year or next, and 
get from it what he can, were it no more than 
enough to pay his taxes and a part of the in- 
terest on the money borrowed to "carry" the 
property ? 

Every financier knows how difficult it is to 
secure a loan on the mortgage of unimproved 
property, at anything approaching the value 
at which the owner holds it. What is this 
but testimony to the unwillingness of most 
men, cu'cumstanced as they find themselves, to 
put their wealth into forms which imply that 
there is to be, for a number of years, all outgo 

1 It will be observed that in the extracts quoted it is 
cultivation which is spoken of. 



166 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

and no income, however great the final profit 
anticijDated ? How unreasonable, then, to as- 
sume that men owning good productive land 
will refuse to allow it to be cultivated now, 
simply because they cannot get for it a rent 
which corresponds to what they look forward 
ultimately to realize as its capital price ! 

Undoubtedly the speculative treatment of 
building lots does cause a certain amount of city 
real estate to be held out of use. Nobody 
needed Mr. George to tell him this ; but that 
the amount of land so reserved is such as seri- 
ously to retard the development of population, 
trade, or manufactures, except in a craze like 
that which seized the people of San Francisco 
in 1868, seems highly improbable. 

Let us now proceed to deal with Mr. George's 
main proposition, the proposition to which the 
others are subsidiary. If this be established, it 
really does not matter much whether the others 
be true or not, for the condition of humanity 
under the grinding pressure of this main force 
will be about as bad as it could be ; while, if 
this be disproved, Mr. George's whole system 
must break down ridiculously, leaving it to 
matter little whether the minor evils attributed 
to the private ownership of land be found to 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PEOPERTY. 167 

have any real existence or not. This it is which 
constitutes the original feature of Mr. George's 
book, that upon which the value of his mission 
as a public teacher depends, that by which he 
must stand or fall, — the proposition, namely, 
that, " irrespective of the increase of population, 
the effect of improvements in methods of pro- 
duction and exchange is to increase rent ; " this 
effect being carried so far that " all the advan- 
tages gained by the march of progress go to 
the owners of land, and wages do not increase," 
the laboring man having " no more interest 
in the general advance of productive power than 
the Cuban slave has in advance in the price 
of sugar," capital also, in its turn, suffering, and 
to an equal extent, since, as Mr. George states, 
the effect of labor-saving machinery or im- 
provements is to increase rent without increas- 
ing either wages or interest. 

Now this is not only false, but ridiculously 
false, blunder being piled on blunder, to reach 
a conclusion so monstrous. 

In the first place, the proposition is contra- 
dicted by plain facts of common observation 
and by unimpeachable testimony of industrial 
statistics. The laborer has gained in wages 
through the labor-saving inventions and im- 



168 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

provements of modern times. Speaking of 
England, Sir James Caird says : " The laborer's 
earning power in procuring the staff of life cost 
him five days' work to pay for a bushel of 
wheat in 1770, four days' in 1840, and two and 
a half days' in 1870." So much for bread. 
" Thirty years ago," says Sir James, " probably 
not one third of the people of this country con- 
sumed animal food more than once a week. 
Now, nearly all of them eat it in meat or 
cheese or butter, once a day." The same high 
authority adds : " The laborer is better lodged 
than he ever was before." We need no one to 
tell us that the laborer's power to purchase 
manufactured articles has increased, since 1770, 
much more rapidly than his power to pur- 
chase agricultural produce, whether animal or 
vegetable. 

To the assertion of Mr. George that even 
the capitalist gains nothing by inventions and 
improvements in the agencies of trade or man- 
ufactures, because the landlord usurps and 
absorbs all possible increase of productive 
power, what better answer can we give than 
that of Professor Emile de Laveleye, himself 
a qualified advocate of the state ownership 
of land? 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 169 

"Who occupy the pretty houses and villas 
which are springing up in every direction in all 
prosperous towns ? Certainly, more than two 
thirds of these occupants are fresh capitalists. 
The value of capital engaged in industrial 
enterprise exceeds that of land itself, and its 
power of accumulation is far greater than that 
of ground rents. The immense fortunes amassed 
so rapidly in the United States, like those of 
Mr. Gould and Mr. Vanderbilt, were the results 
of railway speculation, and not of the greater 
value of land. 

"We see, then, that the increase of profits 
and of interest takes a much larger proportion 
of the total value of labor, and is a more 
general and powerful cause of inequality, than 
the increase of rent."^ 

So much for industrial statistics and facts of 
common observation. Let us now turn to the 
reason" of the case. And, first, let us recite 
Mr. George's own argument. " The effect," he 
says, " of labor-saving improvements will be to 
increase the production of wealth. Now, for 
the production of wealth, two things are re- 
quired, — labor and land. Therefore the effect 
of labor-saving improvements will be to extend 
the demand for land." 

1 Contemporary Eeview, November, 1882. 



170 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

A pretty piece of reasoning this ! A mono- 
graph by Mr. George upon the significance of 
the word "therefore" is really a desideratum 
of systematic logic. Two things are needed 
for the production of wealth, land and labor; 
therefore an increase of production will increase 
the demand for land, forsooth ! But luliy not 
also for labor, since both are concerned in pro- 
duction ? Was there ever a more senseless 
blunder ? But Mr. George is further in error, 
even, than would so far appear. He has got 
the thing exactly wrong. It is not only true 
that an increased production of wealth may 
involve an enhanced demand for labor as well 
as for land, but it is also incontestably true 
that the increased production of wealth rarely 
if ever causes an increased demand for land 
without a corresponding demand for labor, 
while, on the contrary, an increased production 
of wealth may cause an enormous increase in 
the demand for labor without enhancing the 
demand for the products of the soil in any 
degree whatsoever. 

Here is a pound of raw cotton, the production 
of which makes a certain demand, or drain, upon 
the land. To that cotton may be applied the 
labor of one operative for half an hour, worth, 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPEETY. 171 

say, 5 cents. Successive demands for the pro- 
duction of wealth may lead to the application 
of, first, a full hour's labor, then of two hours', 
then of three, four, or five ; finer and finer fab- 
rics being successively produced, until at last 
the pound of cotton has been wrought into the 
most exquisite articles. Mr. George says that 
the whole effect of any increase in the pro- 
duction of wealth is to enhance the demand 
for land. Here is a large increase of produc- 
tion, twofold, threefold, tenfold, perhaps, with 
no additional demand, or drain, upon the 
soil. 

But I go further, and assert, without fear of 
contradiction, that not only is no increase in 
the demand for land necessarily involved in an 
increased production of wealth, but that the 
enhancement of the demand for land, in the 
progress of society, habitually falls short of 
the enhancement of the demand for labor, the 
increase of production taking two great forms, — 
one which involves no increase whatever in 
the materials derived from the soil : the other in 
which the increased demand for land falls 
short, generally far short, often almost infinitely 
short, of the increased demand for labor. 

Let us look around. I have cited one in- 



172 LAND AND ITS KENT. 

stance, that of the use made in the mill of 
a pound of cotton, manufactured successively 
into fabrics worth, perhaps, 20 cents a pound, 
then 30, then 50, then $1.00. This is not an 
extreme case. 

Here is the rude furniture of a laborer's cot- 
tage, worth perhaps S30. The same amount 
of wood may be made into furniture worth 
$200 for the home of the clerk, or into furni- 
ture worth $2,000 for the home of the banker. 
The steel that would be needed to make a cheap 
scythe worth 80 cents may be rendered into 
watch-springs, or surgical or philosophical in- 
struments worth $100 or $200. The actual ma- 
terial derived from the soil which would go into 
a picture by a master, worth thousands, makes a 
smaller draught upon the productive essences of 
the soil than a chromo of the Prodigal's Eeturn, 
sold from a cart for $2, frame included. These 
are, of course, extreme cases, taken purposely, 
with a view to show briefly and graphically the 
range of values that may be produced in dealing 
with the same quantity of material drawn from 
the soil. That range, however, is always great 
as applied to almost any class of expenditures. 
A gentleman of means goes to Delmonico's, and 
pays $2, $3, or $5 for a dinner which makes no 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 17o 

heavier drain upon the productive essences of 
the soil than a dinner of corned beef and cab- 
bage for which a laborer pays 25 cents. A 
part of the difference between the prices of the 
two dinnerS; to be sure, represents the cost 
of an expensive business "stand" on Fifth 
Avenue ; but by far the greater part represents 
service of one kind or another, at one stage 
or another, in making the dishes exquisite in 
appearance and flavor, in serving them neatly 
and elegantly with all the appliances of taste 
and fashion. Our gentleman, before dining, 
had perhaps been measured for a pair of boots, 
for which he was to pay $12 or $15, yet con- 
taining no more leather, and so making no more 
draught upon the productive essences of the soil, 
in the way of nourishing the animal from which 
the leather was cut, than the laborer's $3 pair 
of " stogies ; " he had also ordered a suit of 
clothes for $60 or $75, at his tailor's, no thicker, 
no warmer, containing no more fibre, than the 
laborer's $15 tweeds. In all these cases (and 
they fairly represent the facts of personal con- 
sumption in modern society) the main cause for 
the excess of value in products of higher price 
is not the use of a larger quantity of material, 
involving a greater demand or drain upon the 



174 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

productive essences of the soil, but the appli- 
cation of more labor to the same quantity of 
material. 

In contradiction, then, of Mr. George's propo- 
sition that the entire effect of an increase of 
production is expended in raising rents, neither 
wages nor the interest of capital deriving any 
gain whatsoever therefrom, rent indeed absorb- 
ing the entire gain, " and more than the gain," 
we have seen, — 

1. That an increase of production onay en- 
hance the demand for labor equally with the 
demand for land. 

2. That, in fact, in those forms of production 
which especially characterize modern society, 
the rate of enhancement of the demand for 
labor tends to far exceed the rate of enhance- 
ment of the demand for land. 

3. That an increased demand for the produc- 
tion of wealth may, and in a vast body of in- 
stances does, enhance the demand for labor 
without enhancing the demand for land in any, 
the slightest degree, the whole effect being ex- 
pended in the elaboration of the same amount 
of material. 

4. We have now only to show, in the fourth 
place, that, instead of all improvements and in- 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 175 

ventions increasing the demand for land, as Mr. 
George declares, some very extensive classes of 
improvements and inventions actually operate 
powerfully, directly, and exclusively in reduc- 
ing tlie demand for land, — we have, I say, only 
to show this, to convict this would-be apostle 
of a new political economy and a regenerated 
humanity, of the grossest incompetence for eco- 
nomic reasoning. This it will be easy to do. 

By far the larger proportion of all improve- 
ments and inventions fall naturally under one 
or another of three great classes, — first, those 
which affect manufacturing industry; second, 
those which affect transportation; third, those 
which affect the cultivation of the soil. 

Of these three classes it has always been 
admitted by economists that the first tends to 
enhance the demand for land, and thus to raise 
rents, although not necessarily, or indeed usu- 
ally, without also enhancing the demand for 
labor and capital, and 'thus raising wages and 
interest. The two remaining classes of im- 
provements and inventions tend directly, and 
indeed operate exclusively, ^ to reduce the de- 
mand for land, leaving, thus, the whole advan- 

1 "Irrespective of the increase of population," to use 
Mr. George's own voluntary qualification. 



176 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

tage of such improvements and inventions to 
be acquired by either labor or capital, or, in one 
proportion or another, by both labor and capi- 
tal, in enhanced wages or interest. 

And, first, of improvements in transporta- 
tion. I need not waste time in calling to mind 
the mighty strides which invention has made, 
during the past fifty years, in this direction, 
substituting for the sailing vessel of 400 tons, 
which carried its petty cargo of wheat in forty 
or sixty days from New York to Liverpool, the 
steamship of 5,000 tons, which makes the pas- 
sage in nine days or twelve ; substituting for 
the tedious wagon carriage which in forty or 
fifty miles, perhaps in twenty or thirty only, 
ate up the whole value of the freight,^ carriage 
by steam cars, drawn on steel rails, which, 
allowing for transport from Dakota to New 
York, leaves enough of the value of the freight 
to pay for the ocean passage and for the sup- 
port of the producer upon those distant plains. 
Add the telegraph and the fast mail, for trans- 

1 The enormous and speedily destructive cost of wagon 
carriage may be seen in the fact, recited by Professor Eoscher, 
that, according to the instructions of the Koyal Saxon Com- 
mission, the cost of hauling manure is assumed to be 10 per 
cent higher for a distance of 250 rods, and 20 per cent higher 
for a distance of 500 rods. 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 177 

mitting orders and transacting sales, and one 
will hardly question the assertion that the 
greatest of all the classes of improvements and 
inventions effected within the last half-century, 
has been that which relates to transportation. 

Is it the effect of improvements of this class 
to enhance rents ? Absolutely and exclusively 
the reverse. Whatever quickens and cheapens 
transport, acts directly in the reduction of 
rents,^ and cannot act in any other way, since 
it throws out of cultivation the poorer lands 
previously in use for the supply of the market, 
enabling the better soils at a distance to take 
their place, thus raising the lower limit, or, as 
it is called, the "margin" of cultivation, and 
thus reducing rents. 

But, secondly, take the case of agricultural 
improvements and inventions. Here the effect 
upon rents is not so simple or direct ; but it is 
not the less certain in the result. The case 
cannot be better stated than in the language of 
Mr. Mill, which I will quote at length. 

After premising that improved processes of 
agriculture are of two kinds, — one consisting of 
those which do not increase the produce, but 
diminish the labor and expense by which that 

1 See ante, pp. 23-26. 
12 



178 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

produce is obtained, such as the improved con- 
struction of tools or the introduction of new 
instruments which spare manual labor, like the 
winnowing and threshing machines ; the other 
class consisting of those improvements which 
enable the land to yield a greater absolute pro- 
duce without an equivalent increase of labor, 
such as the disuse of fallows by means of the 
rotation of crops, — the introduction of new veg- 
etable species, either of a nature to "rest the 
land," in alternation, by calling upon the soil 
for different properties, or of a nature which 
enables them to afford a greater amount of sub- 
sistence for men or animals in proportion to the 
draught made upon the land, — the introduction 
of new and more powerful fertilizing agents or a 
better application of familiar manures, — inven- 
tions, too, like subsoil ploughing or tile-drain- 
ing, etc., — Mr. Mill says, "By the former 

OF THE TWO KINDS OF IMPROVEMENT, RENT 
WOULD BE DIMINISHED J BY THE SECOND, IT 
WOULD BE DIMINISHED STILL MORE." 

The following is Mr. Mill's demonstration of 
these propositions : '' Suppose that the demand 
for food requires the cultivation of three quali- 
ties of land, yielding, on an equal surface, and 
at an equal expense, 100, 80, and 60 bushels of 



ATTACKS UPON LANDED PROPERTY. 179 

wheat. The price of wheat will, on the aver- 
age, be just sufficient to enable the third qual- 
ity to be cultivated with the ordinary profit. 
The first quality, therefore, will yield 40 and 
the second 20 bushels of extra profit, consti- 
tuting the rent of the landlord. 

" And, first, let an improvement be made, 
which, without enabling more corn to be grown, 
enables the same corn to be grown with one 
fourth less labor. The price of wheat will fall 
one fourth, and 80 bushels will be sold for the 
price for which 60 were sold before. But the 
produce of the land which produces 60 bushels 
is still required, and, the expenses being as 
much reduced as the price, the land can still 
be cultivated with the ordinary profit. The 
first and second qualities will, therefore, con- 
tinue to yield a surplus of 40 and 20 bushels, 
and corn-rent will remain the same as before. 
But, corn having fallen in price one fourth, the 
same corn-rent is equivalent to a fourth less of 
money, and of all other commodities. 

"If the improvement is of the other kind, 
rent will fall in a still greater ratio. Suppose 
that the amount of produce which the mar- 
ket requires, can be grown not only with a 
fourth less of labor, but on a fourth less of land. 



180 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

If all the land already in cnltivation continued 
to be cultivated, it would yield a produce much 
larger than necessary. Land equivalent to a 
fourth of the produce must now be abandoned ; 
and as the third quality yielded exactly one 
fourth (being 60 out of 240), that quality will 
go out of cultivation. The 240 bushels can 
now be grown on land of the first and second 
qualities only ; being, on the first, 100 bushels 
plus one third, or 133 J bushels ; on the second, 
80 bushels plus one third, or 106f bushels; 
together, 240. The second quality of land, 
instead of the third, is now the lowest, and 
regulates the price. Instead of 60, it is suffi- 
cient if 106f bushels repay the capital with 
the ordinary profit. The price of wheat will 
consequently fall, not in the ratio of 60 to 80, 
as in the other case, but in the ratio of 60 to 
106f . Even this gives an insufficient idea of 
the degree in which rent will be affected. The 
whole produce of the second quality of land 
will now be required to repay the expenses of 
production. That land, being the worst in culti- 
vation, will pay no rent. And the first quality 
will only yield the difference between 133 J 
bushels and 106f, being 26f bushels instead of 
40. The landlords collectively will have lost 



ATTACKS UPOX LANDED PEOPERTY. 181 

33J out of 60 bushels in corn-rent alone, while 
the value and price of what is left will have 
been diminished in the ratio of 60 to 106 1." 

Surely there can be no need to pursue the 
subject. I think we may conclude that we 
have nothing to learn from Mr. George about 
either land or rent, but that we may safely go 
back to our old teachers, Eicardo, Senior, and 
Mill. 

The true economic law of rent was correctly 
apprehended, fully stated, and clearly illus- 
trated by the great economist who has given 
his name thereto. The attempts of Messrs. Bas- 
tiat^ and Carey ^ to overthrow that doctrine 
have completely failed to shake a single pillar in 
the majestic structure of Eicardo's argument. 

The application of that principle, with how- 
ever much of laxity or severity,^ to the various 
grades of soil contributing to the supply of any 
market, will always make rent a most impor- 
tant element in the distribution of wealth. 
The labored efforts of M. Leroy-Beaulieu * to 
disparage rent, by provmg that the landlord's 
share is destined soon to disappear as an ele- 
ment in the distribution of wealth, can com- 

1 See ante, pp. 57-75. ^ See pp. 42-51. 

2 See pp. 75-108. * gee pp. 109-120. 



182 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

mand little conviction in the face of the fact 
stated by Sir James Caird, that the cost of im- 
portation from the American wheat-fields, in 
spite of all the vast inventions and discoveries 
of the past fifty years in the arts of transport, 
still affords a natural protection to English 
corn-lands equal, on the average, to 40 shil- 
lings an acre. 

On the other hand, the extravagant asser- 
tions and passionate declamations of Mr. GJ-eorge 
avail just as little to establish his view of the 
overwhelming importance of rent, as a factor 
in the distribution of the joint produce of land, 
labor, and capital, among the several classes 
taking part in its production. 

The relations of the land to labor and to cap- 
ital, in the distribution of wealth, are very 
nearly what we have heretofore been accus- 
tomed to consider them to be, — • what our old 
masters taught us they were. Thus far, at 
least, there has been little to learn from the 
prophets of a new economic dispensation. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 183 



I 



CHAPTEE IV. 

THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 

N tlie present chapter I propose to offer some 
suggestions regarding that tenure of the land 
which is best suited to advance the interests 
of society as a whole. 

The first question which arises is this : Shall 
land be regarded solely as an instrument of 
production, or shall other aspects of the land 
be considered by the economist in writing of 
the tenure of the soil, and by the statesman in 
dealing with the land as it comes within the 
scope of legislation ? The answer to this ques- 
tion is all-important. Economists generally, 
though not without many and unportant ex- 
ceptions, have been disposed to hold that land 
should be regarded merely as an instrument of 
production. Let the soil, they have said, be 
cultivated in that way, under that system, 
which will secure the largest aggregate pro- 
duce for a given amount of labor and capital, 



184 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

or will secure tlie required quantity of produce 
with tlie least application of labor and capital ; 
and let us trust to the natural operation of 
economic forces to bring about the proper di- 
vision of the produce among individuals and 
classes. If one system will, as contrasted 
with any and all other systems, yield a larger 
amount of vegetable and animal food, of fibre 
for clothing, and of fuel for warmth, the presump- 
tion must be that, by adoptiag that system, 
each individual and each class of producers 
will be the better off, since there is a larger 
amount in the aggregate to be divided, while 
the natural operation of the principle of self- 
interest will effect a distribution at least 
approximating, in reasonableness and natural 
justice, that which would be effected under any 
other, the most favorable, system of produc- 
tion. In a word, no matter what the position 
of the individual member of the industrial so- 
ciety is, as producer, he will, as consumer, find 
his true interest in the largest production of 
wealth. 

The reader will recall the similar debate 
which has long been held over the same ques- 
tion in its application to mechanical industry, 
especially as developed into what we call a 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 185 

manufacturing system. Here the English and 
American economists, ahnost without excep- 
tion, — and perhaps we may say also the econo- 
mists of the Continent, though not without 
numerous and important exceptions, — have 
held that the general interest was to be found 
in the largest production of wealth. Let labor 
be divided and still subdivided ; let occupations 
become diversified, and industries specialized and 
localized, as fully as may be involved in the 
largest possible application of machinery and 
elemental power, and in the realization of the 
highest amount of productive efficiency from 
the mass of productive agents ; have no care 
concerning the position which the mass of 
laborers shall occupy in the industrial order, 
whether they shall be hired or self-employed, 
whether they shall or shall not be individually 
accomplished in any art which could enable 
them to earn a livelihood by exertions outside 
that industrial order; indeed, let it be frankly 
assumed that they will, in the vast majority 
of cases, know but a fraction of a trade, being 
kept at work, for the sake of the highest effi- 
ciency, in performmg, year after year, but a 
single operation, involving perhaps but a single 
motion ; have no thought regarding the influ- 



186 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

ence of sucli an organization of industry upon 
the physical, intellectual, or moral condition 
of the laborer ; let him take his place wherever 
the interests of the largest production assign 
him, without any reference to the question 
whether his duties and his surroundings there 
will tend to the symmetrical development of 
his powers and faculties, or otherwise. 

In a word, accept cheerfully all the incidents 
of that organization of industrial society which 
has been described. Doubtless much evil will 
ensue ; but four considerations should suffice to 
reconcile the social philosopher to this condi- 
tion, — first, that much of the evil would occur 
under any organization of industrial society ; 
secondly, that, thanks to the economic harmo- 
nies, industrial evils are self-limited and tend 
to disappear ; thirdly, that the gain in produc- 
tive power, accomplished by the means recited, 
furnishes a fund with which the individual 
industrial agent may purchase the means of 
physical, intellectual, and moral culture which 
would have been unattainable with a smaller 
production of wealth, which means of culture, 
including leisure for social enjoyment and for 
study, should compensate, and far more than 
compensate, for the tendency to an incomplete 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 187 

or one-sided development of the individual ; 
fourthly, that there is a certain virtue in that 
discipline^ which is the condition of highly 
organized industry, enforcing punctuality and 
precision; that there is a certain virtue in sub- 
jection to the authority of an official superior, 
on the one side, and to the public sentiment of 
a class or a corps, on the other, which acts 
most powerfully upon even the most inconstant 
mind ; that there is a certain virtue in direct 
competition with one's fellows, and in the com- 
parison and criticism of the methods and re- 
sults of work, which stimulates and quickens 
even the dullest and least apprehensive. 

However much one may take exception, at 
points, to the arguments by which the modern 
industrial order of extended and constantly 
extending competition is defended, the econo- 
mists generally have, as was said, accepted the 
principle that, so far as mechanical labor is con- 
cerned, society should be organized to accom- 

1 In tliis connection I should do injustice to the reader, 
did I not refer to the very striking comparison between the 
Domestic and the Factory systems of industry, in their re- 
spective effects upon the laboring populations engaged, which 
is conducted by Colonel C. D. Wright in his report on the 
Factory System, embodied in the Manufacturing Volume of 
the Tenth Census. 



188 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

plish tlie largest production of wealth, without 
any care respecting the industrial position of 
individuals, leaving each to seek his own inter- 
ests as a consumer of wealth, — to recover, that 
is, through the greater quantities and lower 
prices of the comforts, decencies, and luxuries 
of life, whatever he may have lost through the 
sacrifice of his independence and self -sufficiency 
as a producer. 

Two great classes, however, dissent from this 
conclusion. The socialists declare that the 
concentration of manufacturing industry, the 
minute subdivision, and, by consequence, 
the extreme specialization of labor, under com- 
mercial freedom and unlimited competition; 
the principle of association, which, if it do not 
benefit the great capitalists alone, benefits them 
in a far higher proportion than persons of small 
means ; and, lastly, speculation, whose power 
to engross the wealth of the community in- 
creases with the extent and complexity of the 
industrial system, — that these causes yoke pov- 
erty and progress together ; force wages down 
as production rises ; exaggerate the natural dis- 
tinctions of society, ever making the rich richer 
and the poor poorer, and fixing an impassable 
barrier between classes and orders of men. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 189 

The protectionists, also, take exception to 
the proposition that it is the largest production 
of wealth which, on the whole, best subserves 
the public interest. The doctrine of protection 
has no other logical significance than that pro- 
duction should be crossed along certain lines — 
the lines of nationality — for the purpose of 
checking the otherwise irresistible tendency to 
the division of labor, the diversification of oc- 
cupations, the specialization and localization 
of mechanical industry. 

The protectionist entertains, in common with 
the socialist, a profound distrust of competition, 
as an agent for returning to the individual mem- 
ber of society, in his capacity as consumer, what- 
ever henefits he may lose through the sacrifice of 
his advantages as a loroducer, believing that, on 
the contrary, competition tends to exert a very 
unequal pressure upon the several classes of the 
community, and that unequal competition is a 
highly pernicious and possibly destructive force. 

The protectionist rejects, also, the doctrine 
of the economic harmonies, holding, instead, 
the theory that economic injuries, once suffered, 
tend to remain and to deepen, rather than to be 
removed by the natural operation of the prin- 
ciple of self-interest. 



19.Q LAND AND ITS EENT. 

To prevent, therefore, the undue extension 
of the prmciple of competition, the protection- 
ist proposes, as has been stated, to erect barriers 
along the boundary lines of nationality.^ 

For myself, I accept the principle of com- 
petition, in its application to all branches of 
mechanical labor, without any hesitation and 
without any reserve except as to that class of 
restrictions which come fairly within the two 
titles of Factory Acts and Sanitary Eegula- 
tions, respecting which I cannot but esteem the 

1 Conceding, for the sake of argument, that the advan- 
tages of the world-wide extension of the principle of division 
of labor are more than outweighed by the resulting evils, it 
will be noted that the theory of protection is palpably weak 
in the respect that never has anything approaching a serious 
reason been offered for making industrial units out of exist- 
ing political units ; allowing production and trade to follow 
the impulses of competition not only without restraint, but 
actually under encouragement, to the extreme boundaries of 
empire, however widely these may be spread, though it were 
from ocean to ocean or pole to pole, yet forbidding them to 
cross those boundaries, even in the case of the narrowest State 
No shadow of a reason has ever yet been given by any pro 
tectionist for this equivalency, or, rather, conterminateness, 
of political and industrial entities, while the antecedent im 
probability of a sufficient reason being found therefor must. 
in view of the almost infinite range of conditions under 
which nations exist, in the respects of area, soil, extension in 
latitude and in longitude, climate and civilization, be con- 
ceded to be little, if anything, less than hopeless. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 191 

attitude of tlie English and even the Ameri- 
can economists in the past, and to some 
extent in the present, as most unfortunate, 
not only as having been mistaken in point of 
theory, but as having been the cause of a great 
part of the jealousy and hostility which the 
working classes have cherished towards political 
economy. 

But while I accept freedom of production, 
with all its consequences, throughout the length 
and breadth of mechanical industry, with the 
exception indicated, I cannot but feel that there 
is a great deal of truth in the descriptions 
which the socialists and the protectionists give 
of the deleterious effects of extended competi- 
tion ; and that the economists — or free-traders, 
if one chooses to regard the terms as inter- 
convertible — have committed a controversial 
error, to put it on the lowest ground, in dis- 
paraging these evils and even denying their 
existence. 

The economic harmonies do not prevail ex- 
cept among populations rarely gifted with intel- 
ligence and enterprise. Economic injuries do 
not tend to diminish and to disappear, but to 
abide and to deepen, imder the natural opera- 
tion of the principle of self-interest. The rule 



192 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

"To liim that hatli shall be given," expresses a 
law of wide extent and stringent application 
throughout the sphere of industry. Competi- 
tion may become a crushing and destructive 
force, when it is so far unequal that one class, 
alert and aggressive, wielding large capitals, and 
acting m concert or with a common understand- 
ing, exerts a continuous, unremitting pressure 
upon another class, whose members cannot ade- 
quately respond to the demand made upon them, 
in a prompt assertion of their own interests, 
through change of place or occupation. 

This is so clear in principle, and it is so 
manifest that the working classes have suffered 
enormous injuries, enduring injuries, through 
the operation of unequal competition, in that 
unceasing struggle for economical vantage- 
ground which is involved in the highly intense 
organization of modern industry, as it has been 
described, that the economists have committed 
a palpable controversial error in disparaging 
the importance of these considerations, and 
even denying them any validity whatever. 
Had they taken upon themselves the task of 
investigating the effects of imperfect competi- 
tion, in frank recognition of the too palpable 
facts of modern industrial society ; had they 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 193 

undertaken to trace the curve, so to speak, 
which the principle of self-interest describes, 
under varying conditions, upon the ground of 
the general good, showing under what circum- 
stances the public and the private interest are 
coincident, under what circumstances the oper- 
ation of the principle of self-interest, unre- 
strained, may become, in a higher or lower 
degree, prejudicial ; and had they been willing 
to inquire, or even to tolerate the inquiries of 
others, concerning the means, if any, by which 
the pressure of an unequal competition may 
be relieved, — they might have retained the con- 
fidence of the working classes, whom they have 
alienated almost beyond the possibility of rec- 
onciliation by their uncompromismg reiteration 
of the dogma of Laissez faire. 

Our American economists have been the great- 
est sinners in this respect. Even after Cairnes, 
the ablest English economist who survived 
Mill, had frankly confessed that since "human 
beings know and follow their interests, accord- 
ing to their lights and dispositions, but not 
necessarily, nor in practice always, in that 
sense in which the interest of the individual is 
coincident with that of others or of the whole, 
. . . there is no security that the economic 

13 



194 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

phenomena of society, as at present constituted, 
will arrange themselves spontaneously in the 
way which is most for the common good ; " 
and even after Jevons, the ablest English 
economist who survived Cairnes, had declared, 
in reference to this very subject, that it is 
futile to attempt to uphold any theory of 
eternal fixed principles or abstract rights re- 
garding what is simply a question of proba- 
bility and degree, — our American economists 
have continued monotonously to repeat the 
doctrine of the economic harmonies, as if it 
contained the sum of all truth, and have dealt 
with every one who presumed to seek to define 
that part of the field of the general good which 
fails to be covered by the operation of the prin- 
ciple of self-interest, almost as an economic 
outlaw. 

I do not know that a better instance could 
be given of the unfortunate efi'ects of the con- 
troversial error (looking at it still from the 
lowest point of view) which the economists 
have committed in dealing with this question, 
than by referring again, for a moment, to Mr. 
George's work.^ 

The keynote of that work is found in its 
1 See ante, p. 141. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 195 

title, "Progress and Poverty." The author, 
with extraordinary rhetorical skill, grasps all 
the facts which establish a seeming connection 
between these two phenomena. To his own 
satisfaction he finds that " where the conditions 
to which material progress everywhere tends 
are most fully realized, — that is to say, where 
population is densest, wealth greatest, and the 
machinery of production and exchange most 
highly developed, — we find the deepest pov- 
erty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and 
the most enforced idleness. . . . The tramp 
comes with the locomotive, and almshouses 
and prisons are as surely the marks of mate- 
rial progress as are costly dwellings, rich ware- 
houses, and magnificent churches. Upon streets 
lighted with gas and patrolled by uniformed 
policemen, beggars wait for the passer-by ; and 
in the shadow of college and library and 
museum, are gathering the more hideous 
Huns and fiercer Yandals of whom Macaulay 
prophesied." 

The cause of this close conjunction of Pov- 
erty with Progress is the object of Mr. George's 
research. Obvious, close at hand, is the influ- 
ence of the modern organization of industry, — 
the concentration of capitals, the speciaHzation 



196 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

of occupations, tlie localization of manufactures, 
the intense and unremitting competition of 
world-wide exchanges. 

But the professional economists assure Mr. 
George that it is not this cause which produces 
the effect he seeks to explain ; that, through 
economic harmonies, never to be sufficiently ad- 
mired, the individual industrial agent is pro- 
tected from all possibility of harm amid the 
operation of these tremendous forces, and that 
the laborer will surely recover, as consumer, 
whatever he may lose as producer. 

Shut off, then, by the economists themselves, 
from finding here the cause of " the association 
of Poverty with Progress," Mr. George turns to 
rent as the source of the economic evils he 
describes ; and it is difficult to see how he can 
be answered by those who stand committed to 
the dogma of the economic harmonies. He 
has arrived at his demonstration through a 
logical process of exclusion ; and it is the econ- 
omists themselves who have thrown out, for 
his behoof if not on his behalf, the only cause, 
other than rent, which could reasonably be 
adduced in explanation of the phenomenon. 

To return from this long excursion, the prime 
question regarding the land, which addresses it- 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 197 

self alike to economist and to statesman, is this : 
Shall land he regarded simply as an instrument 
of production, as we have agreed to consider 
the organized system of mechanical industry ? 
Shall we say that it does not matter how much 
those who actually work upon the soil may 
lose, of individuality or independence, in their 
economical position, since they will be sure, as 
consumers, to make themselves good for any 
disadvantage which they may immediately suf- 
fer, as producers ? Shall we consent to trust to 
competition alone to effect the distribution of 
the produce of agricultural labor, as we have, 
with whatever of misgiving or reserve, accepted 
it as the agent for the distribution of the pro- 
ducts of mechanical labor ? ^ Or must we take 
some further bond for securing the interests of 
the producer who works upon the land ? Or, 
again, are there considerations addressing them- 
selves to the economist or the statesman, which 
claim priority to the questions relating either to 

1 This view is expressed by Sir James Caird, in speaking 
of English agi-iculture : " Our agriculture is no longer in- 
fluenced hy considerations of the means of finding employment 
for surplus labor, but is now being developed on the prin- 
ciple of obtaining the largest produce at the least cost, — the 
same principle by which the power-loom has supplanted the 
hand-loom." 



198 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

the production or the distribution of wealth, — 
considerations, for example, relating to the con- 
sumption of wealth or to the relation of subsist- 
ence to population, or considerations relating to 
good citizenship and the security of the State ? 

That great numbers of intelligent economists, 
who willingly accept all the consequences of 
competition acting upon the most extended sys- 
tem of production in mechanical industry, either 
hesitate or altogether refuse to regard land as 
a mere instrument of production, is well known 
to all students of economics. ISTor do these men 
occupy an illogical position. 

In the first place, looking to what are called 
the rights of property, it is admitted by all 
sound writers on public policy, that property 
in land differs markedly and materially from 
property in capital or in the products of labor. 
If both species of property are "sacred," to 
use a familiar phrase, landed property, by 
almost universal consent, stands lower, much 
lower, in the hierarchy than property in capi- 
tal. It would be easy to quote from writers of 
every school in support of this assertion, but 
doubtless the statement of Professor Eoscher 
will be accepted as a just summary of the views 
of the body of publicists : — 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 199 

" The appropriation of ' original and indestruc- 
tible natural forces' lias its basis not so much 
in justice as in the general good ; and the state 
has always considered itself entitled to attach 
to the ' monopoly of land ' which it accorded to 
the first possessor all kinds of limitations and 
conditions, in the interest of the common good, 
and sometimes to consider private property in 
land in the light of a semi-public function." ^ 

If, therefore, the proprietor of land owns it 
in a somewhat different and a somewhat lower 
sense than that in which the proprietor of 
chattels owns them, one class of valid objec- 
tions to interference by authority with the use 
of property in chattels may not apply with 
equal force, or indeed may perhaps not apply 
at all, to property in land. 

This distinction is vigorously asserted by 
Professor Cairnes, in his essay entitled ''Politi- 
cal Economy and Land." 

" Sustained," he says, "by some of the greatest 
names, — I will say, by every name of the first 
rank in Political Economy, from Turgot and 
Adam Smith to Mill, — I hold that the land 
of a country presents conditions which separate 
it economically from the great mass of the other 

1 See Mr. Mill's remark, ante, p. 124. 



200 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

objects of wealtli, — conditions which, if they 
do not absolutely and under all circumstances 
impose upon the state the obligation of con- 
trolling private enterprise in dealing with land, 
at least explain why this control is, in certain 
stages of social progress, indispensable, and why, 
in fact, it has been constantly put in force 
whenever public opinion or custom^ has not 
been strong enough to do without it. 

"And not merely does economic science, as 
expounded by its ablest teachers, dispose of cv 
priori objections to a policy of intervention 
with regard to land, it even furnishes princi- 
ples fitted to inform and guide such a policy 
in a positive sense. Far from being the irrec- 
oncilable foe, it is the natural ally, of those 
who engage in this course, at once justifying 
the principle of their undertaking, and lending 
itself as a minister to the elaboration of the 
constructive design." 

But, again, a wide difference in the degree 
of advantage which may be expected to result 
from the application of the subdivision of 
labor and the aggregation of capitals in agri- 
culture, as compared with manufactures, enters 

1 On the power of public opinion or custom over rent, 
see ante, pp. 47-51. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 201 

to justify a very different view of tlie two 
cases. 

It would be wholly reasonable to admit that 
the enormous gain in productive power which 
results from the modern organization of me- 
chanical labor must be accepted as outweighing 
all the evils incidental to that system, while 
denying emphatically that the productive power 
of land in large estates under a single manage- 
ment shows any such excess over the produc- 
tive power of land when cut up into small farms 
cultivated by their respective owners, as to 
compensa.te for the disadvantages that might 
be held to result from a less equable distribu- 
tion of wealth, through the discouragement of 
frugality, through a more wanton increase of 
population, or through the merely political loss 
resulting to the State from the destruction of 
an independent and self-reliant yeomanry. 

That the excess of advantages, productively 
considered, upon the side of large estates, as 
compared with what are usually called peasant 
properties, cannot be very great, is shown by 
the fact that the existence of such an excess in 
any degree has been disputed by writers so in- 
telligent and candid as Messrs. Mill, Thornton, 
and Hippolyte Passy. 



202 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

Yet, for one, I am willing to accept tlie con- 
clusion of Sir James Caird, as stated in the 
following paragraphs : — 

" A system is best tested by its fruits. Com- 
pared with all other countries, our threefold 
plan of landlord, farmer, and laborer, appears 
to yield larger returns, with fewer laborers and 
from an equal extent of land. 

" Our average produce of wheat is 28 bushels 
an acre, against 16 in France, 16 in Germany, 
and 13 in Eussia and the United States.^ We 
show a similar advantage in live-stock, both in 
quantity and quality. We have far more horses, 
cattle, and sheep in proportion to acreage than 
any other country, and in all these kinds there 
is a general superiority. Our most famous 
breeders of live-stock are the tenant farmers. 
The best examples of farming are found in the 
same class. The improved breeds of cattle, the 
Leicester and Southdown sheep, and the ex- 

1 The reader will, of course, understand that these figures 
do not represent the comparative fertility of the lands of the 
several countries named, or the comparative profits of agri- 
culture. The English product is obtained, as Sir James 
Caird states in the sentences following, through the applica- 
tion of more labor, the employment of more cattle (furnishing 
both power and manure), and the use of more machinery, the 
cost of all which has to come out of the value of the product. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 203 

tended use of macliinery, manures, and artificial 
foods are chiefly due to them. 

''And the neatness of the cultivation, the 
straight furrow and the beautiful lines of drilled 
corn, the well-built ricks and docile horses, ex- 
hibit at once the strength and the skill of the 
laborers. 

" If that mode of husbandry which lessens the 
exchangeable value of bread and meat by an 
increase of production and supply, is the best 
for the community, from whom a smaller propor- 
tion of their labor is required for the purchase 
of their food, then our system of subdivision of 
labor by landlord, farmer, and laborer, the three 
interests engaged in its production, will stand 
a favorable comparison with that of any other 
country." ^ 

The reason why the division of labor and the 
concentration of capital accomplish so much 
less, relatively, in agriculture than in manu- 
factures, is twofold. 

On the one hand, the nature of agricultural 
operations, the extent of the field over which 
they are carried on, the varying necessities of 
the seasons in their order, and the limited ap- 
plicability of machinery and elemental power, 

1 The Landed Interest and the Supply of Food, pp. 68-70. 



204 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

preclude tlie possibility of achieving a gain in 
tills department of activity which shall be at 
all comparable to that which is attained where 
hundreds and thousands of workmen are gath- 
ered upon a few acres of ground, where ma- 
chinery the most delicate and the most powerful 
may be applied successively to every minute 
operation, and where the force of steam or grav- 
ity may be invoked to multiply many fold the 
efficiency of the unaided man. 

On the other hand, there is a virtue in the 
mere ownership of land by the actual laborer, 
which goes far, very far, to outweigh the ad- 
vantages which great capitals bring to the cul- 
tivation of the soil. The " magic of property " 
in transmuting the bleak rock into the bloom- 
ing garden, the barren sand of the seashore 
into the richest mould, has been told by a 
hundred travellers and economists since Arthur 
Young's day. In his tireless activity, "from 
the rising of the lark to the lodging of the 
lamb ; " in his unceasing vigilance against every 
form of waste ; in his sympathetic care of the 
drooping vine, the broken bough, the tender 
young of the flock and the herd; in his inti- 
mate knowledge of the character and capabili- 
ties of every field, and of every corner of every 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 205 

field, within his narrow domain ; in his passion- 
ate devotion to the land which is all his own, 
which was his father's before him, which will 
be his son's after him, the peasant, the small 
proprietor, holds the secret of an economic vir- 
tue which even the power of machinery can 
scarcely overcome. 

Americans are perhaps likely to overrate the 
degree in which operations on a vast scale, un- 
der a single management, may be advanta- 
geously carried on. The stories of the great 
farms of Illinois and California, and, even more 
prodigious, of the Dalrymple farms along 
the line of the Northern Pacific Eailroad, are 
likely to create the impression on the mind 
of the reader that there is almost no limit to 
the success of great, even of gigantic, agricul- 
ture. 

Such cases, are, however, highly exceptional, 
even in the cultivation of the staple cereal 
crops and of cotton ; while, as we reach the 
numberless minor crops, which in their aggre- 
gate constitute a large part of the agriculture 
of the world, the advantages of aggregated 
capitals diminish rapidly or disappear alto- 
gether. 

On this point M. Leroy-Beaulieu remarks : — 



206 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

"The more agriculture develops, the more 
the exceptional advantage of great operations 
diminishes. When we have only to do with 
simple processes, like gathering the wild fruits 
of the earth, burning or cutting trees and brush 
to clear the soil, opening the land with im- 
proved ploughs, harvesting with machines 
which in a high degree economize hand-labor ; 
or when, indeed, it is merely necessary to fence 
in large tracts, leaving the flocks to roam there 
untended, care alone being taken that they 
do not stray and that the animals are duly 
sheared or slaughtered, — under these circum- 
stances large capitals have doubtless a signal 
advantage. The principle of combination, by 
avoiding the dissipation of human energy, gives 
much greater results than a multitude of sepa- 
rate and independent efforts. 

"But these conditions are met only in an 
early stage. They soon disappear. There are 
scarcely more than two agricultural products 
which succeed very well in large operations, — 
the cereals and the raising of cattle.^ It is 

1 M. Leroy-Bcaulieu might perhaps have added cotton ; 
yet the results of Mr, Edward Atkinson's investigations 
strongly tend to prove that, with free labor, small cotton 
plantations have an actual advantage. 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 207 

said, these are the principal products ; but even 
with these the small and medium can very 
easily hold their own against the great culture, 
when once the period of clearing and peopling 
the ground has passed, while, on the contrary, 
the great culture, at least the giant culture, 
can hardly hold its own against the small, as 
respects all the accessory products of agricul- 
ture, the importance of which is continually 
on the increase. The finer products, with- 
out exception, — vegetables, fruits, wine, poul- 
try, butter, cheese, — are better suited to small 
or medium than to large operations. The im- 
portance of the eye of the master upon all 
the details of production becomes much greater 
as the cultivatmg of the soil becomes more 
intensive and more varied." 

Thirdly, in addition to the question of gross 
production, we have considerations relating to 
the distribution of the produce, which may 
properly enter to affect the mind of the econ- 
omist or the statesman when dealing with the 
tenure of the soil. 

That the industrial position of the individual 
agent, — as, for instance, whether producing in 
his own right and name, by permission of no 
one, a merchantable product, regarding which 



208 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

he lias only to take the risks of a fortunate or 
unfortunate exchange, or, in the opposite case, 
as a candidate for employment at the hands of 
another, through whose consent only can he ob- 
tain the opportunity to take a part in produc- 
tion, and with whom, consequently, he has to 
make terms in advance of production and as a 
condition precedent to production, — that the 
industrial position of the individual agent may 
powerfully affect the distribution of the produce 
among those who take part in production ; that 
the injuries suffered in that distribution by the 
economically weak should result, more or less 
extensively, in permanent industrial disability, 
through loss of health and strength, through 
loss of constitutional energy or corruption of 
the blood, through loss of self-respect and social 
ambition, such disability being as real and as 
lasting as the disabilities incurred in a railway 
accident, the laborer, in consequence thereof, 
sinking to a lower industrial grade, beyond the 
reach of any reparative or restorative forces of 
a purely economical origin ; and, lastly, that in 
the reaction of distribution upon production, 
the whole community and all classes should 
suffer, both economically and socially ; — how 
any one can deny these things, I cannot con- 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 209 

ceive, although it has mysteriously pleased the 
economists almost wholly to omit considera- 
tion of causes of this nature. 

That the system of small holdings reduces to 
a minimum the difficulties and the economic 
dangers attending the distribution of wealth, 
is implied in the very statement of the case. 
The great majority of those who work upon the 
land being self-employed, and the produce being 
their own, without deduction, the question 
what they shall receive as the fruit of their 
labor becomes a question of their own indus- 
try and prudence, subject alone to the kindness 
or unkindness of nature in giving the sunshine 
and the rain in their due season and measure, 
or the reverse. 

The reduction of the mass of those who work 
upon the land to the condition of hired labor- 
ers brings upon each the necessity of finding a 
master with whom he must make terms prece- 
dent to production ; of entering into a compe- 
tition at once with his fellows as to priority of 
employment, and with the members of the em- 
ploying class as to rates of wages and forms of 
payment, for which competition he may be more 
or less disqualified by poverty, ignorance, and 
mental inertia, by distrust of himself or by 
14 



210 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

jealousy of others. The condition of the agri- 
cultural laborers of England during the past 
hundred years shows that the evils portrayed 
are not merely imaginary. 

Fourthly, even more important than the con- 
siderations relating to the production and the 
distribution of wealth, bearing upon the tenure 
of land, which have been indicated, are certain 
considerations connected with the Consumption 
of Wealth. 

Under which system of holdings are the 
forces which determine the uses to be made 
of wealth likely to be most favorable to the 
strength and prosperity of the community? 

That the ownership of land, in the main, by 
the cultivating class, promotes frugality and a 
wiser application of the existing body of wealth, 
is too manifest to require discussion. The true 
savings-bank, says Sismondi, is the soil. There 
is never a time when the owner of land is not 
painfully conscious of improvements which he 
desires to make upon his farm, of additions 
which he desires to make to his stock. For 
every shilling of money, as for every hour of 
time, he knows an immediate use. He has 
not to carry his earnings past a drinking-saloon 
to find an opportunity to invest them. The 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 211 

hungry land is, even at the moment, crying 
aloud for them. 

" Day-laborers," says Mr. Mill, " where the 
laboring class mainly consists of them, are usu- 
ally improvident ; they spend carelessly to the 
full extent of their means, and let the future 
shift for itself. 

"This is so notorious that many persons, 
otherwise well affected to the labormg classes, 
hold it as a fixed opinion that an increase of 
wages would do them little good, unless accom- 
panied by at least a corresponding improvement 
in their tastes and habits. The tendency of 
peasant proprietors, and of those who hope to 
become proprietors, is to the contrary extreme, 
— to take even too much thought for the mor- 
row. They are oftener accused of penuriousness 
than of prodigality. They deny themselves 
reasonable indulgences, and live wretchedly, 
in order to economize. 

" In Switzerland almost everybody saves, who 
has any means of saving ; among the French, 
though a pleasure-loving and reputed to be a 
self-indulgent people, the spirit of thrift is dif- 
fused through the rural population in a manner 
most gratifying as a whole, and which in in- 
dividual instances errs rather on the side of 
excess than defect. .... 



212 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

" But some excess in this direction is a small 
and passing evil compared with recklessness 
and improvidence in the laboring classes, and a 
cheap price to pay for the inestimable worth of 
the virtue of self-dependence, as the general 
characteristic of a people, — a virtue which is 
one of the first conditions of excellence in a hu- 
man character ; the stock on which, if the other 
virtues are not grafted, they have seldom any 
firm root ; a quality indispensable in the case of 
a laboring class, even to any tolerable degree of 
physical comfort, and by which the peasantry 
of France and of most European countries of 
peasant proprietors are distinguished beyond 
any other laboring population." 

Fifthly, the influence upon population of a 
widely popular tenure of the soil was once mat- 
ter of dispute ; but the entire effect of European 
experience during the past generation has been 
to corroborate the view that no other state of 
agricultural economy tends, on the whole, so 
much to discourage an improvident increase of 
numbers. 

The reasons herefor cannot be better stated 
than they have been by M. Sismondi : — 

" In the countries in which cultivation by 
small proprietors still continues, population 



THE BEST HOLDIXG OF THE LAND. 213 

increases regularly and rapidly, until it has at- 
tained its natural limits ; tliat is to say, inheri- 
tances continue to be divided and subdivided 
among several sons as long as, by an increase of 
labor, each family can extract an equal income 
from a smaller portion of land.^ A father who 
possessed a vast extent of natural pasture divides 
it among his sons, and they turn it mto fields 
and meadows ; his sons divide it among their 
sons, who abolish fallows ; each improvement 
in agricultural knowledge admits of another 
step in the subdivision of property. 

" But there is no danger that the proprietor 
will bring up children to make beggars of 
them. He knows exactly what inheritance he 
has to leave them ; he knows that the law ^ will 
divide it equally among them; he sees the 
limits beyond which partition would make 
them descend from the rank which he himself 
has filled ; and a just family pride, common to 
the peasant and the prmce, makes hhn abstain 
from summoning into life children for whom 
he cannot properly provide. If more are born, 

1 See ante, pp. 13-16. 

2 This has reference to the principle of "Partible Suc- 
cession," widely incorporated into the law of Continental 
Europe. 



214 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

at least they do not marry, or they agree among 
themselves which of several brothers shall per- 
petuate the family." 

The power of population strictly to limit 
itself, under the impulse to preserve family 
estates from undue subdivision, by the means 
adverted to in the closing sentence of the 
paragraph quoted, is strikingly illustrated by 
Professor Cliffe Leslie, in the facts which 
he adduces regarding the population of Au- 
vergne. 

In the mountains, it appears, the people cling 
with remarkable tenacity to the conservation 
of the inheritance unbroken. The daughters 
willingly consent to take vows and renounce the 
patrimony of their parents; or, if they con- 
tract marriage, agree to leave to the head of 
the family their individual shares of the inheri- 
tance. It is the same with the sons, of whom 
some become priests ; others emigrate, consent- 
ing never to claim any part of the property. 
One of the sons remains at home, working with 
the father and mother, and becomes in time 
the proprietor of the ancestral estate. Thus the 
principle of equal partition, established by law, 
is eluded by the connivance of the family, it 
seldom occurring that the other children assert 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 215 

their claims, so fullj accepted is this usage in 
the manners of the mountains. 

Professor Leslie, after giving the foregoing as 
the substance of an official report, adds : " The 
renunciation by the emigrants of their share in 
the family property certainly shows, if not an 
extraordinary imperviousness to new ideas, an 
extraordinary tenacity of old ones ; and, in par- 
ticular, of two ideas which are among the old- 
est in human society, — subordination to the 
male head of the family, and conservation of 
the family property unbroken." 

From the '' London Times," ^ I take the fol- 
lowing remarkable testimony to the influence 
of an extensive ownership of land in antago- 
nizing the procreative force, and in winning for 
improved living, comfort, luxury, and security 
of condition, what otherwise would be usurped 
and wasted upon increase of population, with 
resulting squalor and poverty : — 

" Over the greater part of France the standard 
of comfort and well-being has been increasing 
ever since the termination of the great war in 
1815. The country had been so drained and 
impoverished by the great wars of Napoleon 
and by a century and a half of bad government, 
1 January 25, 1883. 



216 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

that the general misery of the population was 
indescribable, and the poverty even of the 
landed proprietors and middle classes was very 
great. . . . For many years comfort and well- 
being, and even luxury, have made their way 
into the households of all classes in France. The 
standard of living has risen enormously. The 
habits of saving and thrift have not been neg- 
lected. In the art of managing and regularizing 
their lives, the French people are unrivalled, and 
the object of every family is to live and to save, 
at the same time, so as to be able to leave 
their sons and daughters in as good a position as 
themselves, at all events, and in a better, if 
possible. . . . 

" Among people with such habits and such 
views of life, the risk and expenditure attend- 
ant upon a large family are naturally regarded 
with horror. ' Since two or three children give 
us sufficient enjoyment of the pleasures of 
paternity, why,' the greater number of French- 
men argue, ' should we have more ? With two 
or three children, we can live comfortably, and 
save sufficient to leave our children as well 
off as ourselves; a greater number would in- 
volve curtailment of enjoyments both for our- 
selves and our children/ " 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 217 

"VVitliout confining myself at all points within 
strictly economic lines of thought, I have 
grouped the considerations which lead me to 
dissent from the opinion of M. Leroy-Beaulieu 
that if the economic interest which demands the 
greatest possible production of wealth be found 
irreconcilable with the moral interest which 
claims that the greatest number of persons 
shall be proprietors of land, it is the former 
which should by all means prevail, the latter 
which should in all cases give way. 

Beyond the considerations which I have felt 
at liberty to adduce, is the interest of the com- 
munity in the development of the manhood 
of its citizens, through the individuality and 
independence of character which spring from 
working upon the soil that you own. 

"I believe," wrote Emerson,^ "in the spade 
and an acre of good ground. Whoso cuts a 
straight path to his own bread, by the help of 
God in the sun and rain and sprouting of the 
grain, seems to me an universal workman. He 
solves the problem of life, not for one, but 
for all men of sound body." 

Still, in addition to this, is the political in- 
terest which the State has, that as many as may 

1 To Carlyle, March 18, 1840. 



218 LAND AND ITS EENT. 

be of its citizens shall be directly interested in 
the land. Especially with popular institutions is 
there a strong assurance of peace, order, purity, 
and liberty, where those who are to make the 
laws, to pay the taxes, to rally to the support of 
the Government against foreign invasion or do- 
mestic violence, are the proprietors of the soil. 

I would by no means argue in favor of a 
dull uniformity of petty holdings. Probably 
Professor Eoscher is right in saying that a 
mingling of large, medium, and small proper- 
ties, in which those of medium size predomi- 
nate, forms the most wholesome of national 
and economical organizations. 

In such an organization each class of estates 
is a help and strength to every other. The 
great estates afford adequate field and ample 
capital for advanced experimental agriculture, 
by the results of which all will, in turn, profit. 
They set the standard of " the straight furrow, 
the well-built ricks, and the beautiful lines of 
drilled corn," to use the enthusiastic phrase 
of Sir James Caird. 

The multitude of small proprietors, on the 
other hand, as Professor Emile de Lave! eye has 
well expressed it, serve as a kind of political 
rampart and safeguard for the holders of large 



THE BEST HOLDING OF THE LAND. 219 

estates ; tliey offer the laborer a ready resort to 
the land, a sort of economical " escape/' in the 
failure of mechanical employment; and they 
provide the nation with a solid body of yeo- 
men, not easily bought or bullied or cajoled by 
demagogues. 

In the medium-sized farms, again, may be 
found united no small measure of the advan- 
tages of both the large estate and the petty 
holding, the three degrees together forming the 
ideal distribution of the soil of any country, 
where both economical and social considera- 
tions are taken into account. 

What, if anything, should be done by the 
State to promote the right holding of land ? 
Mr. Thornton's reply to this question is the 
reply of Diogenes to Alexander : " Get out of 
my light ! " And, indeed, in a country like our 
own, with vast unoccupied tracts still available 
for settlement, with a population active, alert, 
aggressive, both industrially and socially, and 
with no vicious traditions, no old abuses, per- 
verting the natural operation of economic forces 
to ends injurious to the general interest, it is 
only needful that the State should keep off its 
hand, and allow the soil to be parted as the 



220 LAND AND ITS RENT. 

unhelped and unMndered course of sale and 
bequest may determine. But wherever there 
is a peasantry unfitted for competition, upon 
purely commercial principles, with a powerful 
and wealthy class, under a painful pressure of 
population, there the regulation of the holding 
of land becomes a proper matter of State 
concern. 



<x 



INDEX 



AGEICULTURE, always subject to the law of diminishing re- 
turns, 13-16 ; the characteristic agriculture of the United 
States, 45-47; agriculture of England compared with 
that of other countries, 202 ; agriculture contrasted with 
manufactures, as to the effects of an extensive applica- 
tion of the principle of division of labor, 197-207. 

ALISON, SIR A., offers an illustration of the force of geo- 
metrical progression, 83. 

AMERICAN COMPETITION, its influence on European 
rents, 25, 26, 115-117 ; characteristic American agricul- 
ture, 45-47, 202. 

ANDERSEN, JAMES, stated the true law of rent in 1777, 
32. 

ATKINSON, EDWARD, small plantations and the cotton 
culture, 206 n. 

AUYERGNE, influence of personal proprietorship in that re- 
gion upon marriage and the increase of population, 21 4, 
215. 

BASTIAT, FRIEDIERIC, his attack upon the economic 

doctrine of rent, 57-75. 
BELGIUM, « rack rents " in, 44. 



222 INDEX. 

CAIRD, SIR JAMES, range of productiveness among pas- 
ture-lands, 11 ; position of the English, land-owners, 
how affected by recent improvements in transportation, 
115-117 ; improvement in the condition of the British 
laborer, 168 ; advantages of large as contrasted with 
small farms, 202, 203. 
CAIRNES, PROFo J. E., effect of land monopoly upon 
rents, 41, 42 ; his criticism of Bastiat's word " services," 
59 n.; the operation of self-interest not always com- 
patible with the general good, 193, 104 ; the ownership 
of land rightfully subject to State regulation, 199, 200. 
CALIFORNIA, the speculative holding of its land, 1868-73, 

163, 164. 
CAPITAL, invested in the soil, how compensated, 32-37, 
82-85 ; the law of capital contrasted with the law of 
rent, 33-35 ; Mr. George's disparaging view of the im- 
portance of capital in production, 144 ; his view that 
none of the gain due to increase of productive power 
is received by capital, in enhanced interest, 145-188. 
CAREY, HENRY C, his attack upon the economic doc- 
trine of rent, 75 ; his first argument, derived from " the 
cost of producing farms," 75-88 ; his second argument, 
derived from the historical order of the occupation and 
cultivation of the soil, 88-108. 
CATTLE, cost of transportation from America to Europe, 

115, 116. 
CHUZZLEWIT, MARTIN", his lamentable experiences in 
the town of Eden used in argument against the doc- 
trine of Ricardo, 118. 
COMBINATIONS to exact rents in excess of the Ricardian 

formula, 38-42. 
COMMUNITIES, CULTIVATING (Tillage), originally the 
proprietors of the soil, 128, 129 ; their efliciency as cul- 
tivators, 137,^138. 



INDEX. 223 

COMPENSATION", claim of land-owners to, should their 
estates be taken by the State, admitted by Mr. Mill, 
124, 126, 127 ; denied by Mr. George, 161. 

COMPETITION, implied in the economic doctrine of rent, 
12, 38-53 ; effects of unequal competition in mechani- 
cal industry, 183-194 ; in agriculture, 219, 220. 

COMPOUND INTEREST, how far it may safely be intro- 
duced into economic computations, 83, 84. 

CONFISCATION OF RENT, proposed by Mr. Mill, saving 
the rights of existing holders, 124-127 ; by Mr. George, 
without saving such rights, 161. 

CONSUMERS OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE, not con- 
cerned in the payment of rent, 27-31 ; how far may 
agricultural laborers, as consumers of agricultural pro- 
duce, recover whatever of advantage they may lose 
through the sacrifice of their independent position as 
producers ? 197, 198. 

CONSUMPTION OF WEALTH, how influenced by the 
tenure of the soil, 210, 211. 

COST OF "PRODUCING FARMS," used by M. Bastiat 
as an argument against the economic doctrine of rent, 
67, 68 ; this argument also used by Mr. Carey, 76 ; the 
argument examined, 77-88 ; the same argument used 
by M. Leroy-Beaulieu, 111, 112. 

CRISES, COMMERCIAL, attributed by Mr. George to the 
private ownership of land, 156-158. 

CUSTOM, as influencing rents, 49, 50. 

DEPRECIATION OF PROPERTY, as complicating the 
problem of nationalizing the land, 134-136. 

DIMINISHING RETURNS IN AGRICULTURE, expla- 
nation of the term, 13-16 ; scope of the principle, 
16-21. 



224 . INDEX. 

DISTRIBUTIOjS' of wealth, importance of rent in the, 
109-120 ; influence of the tenure of the soil upon that 
distribution, 201, 207-210. 

DIVISION OF LABOR, as increasing production, 13-15 ; 
mechanical, contrasted with agricultural, industry, in 
this respect, 184-190, 197-207 ; its effect upon the dis- 
tribution and consumption of wealth and upon popula- 
tion, 185-189, 194-196, 207-219. 

EMERSOIT, R. W., on the virtue there is in the cultivation 
of the soil, 217. 

ENGLAIjTD, competitive rents not always exacted, 48, 49 ; 
rents how aff'ected by modern facilities of transporta- 
tion, 115-117 ; productiveness of its agriculture com- 
pared with that of other countries, 202. 

EUROPE, CONTINENTAL, competitive rents not the 
rule, 49. 

FACTORY ACTS justified by economic principles, 190, 191. 

FERTILITY, diff'erences in, as governing rent, 10-11, 13- 
21 ; as governing settlement and cultivation, 89-108. 

FISCAL INUTILITY of public lands, 136, 137, 140, 141. 

FRANCE, productiveness of its agriculture compared with 
that of England, 202 ; frugality of its peox^le, 210 ; re- 
straint of population, 214-216. 

FRUGALITY, how influenced by peasant proprietorship, 
210-212. 

GEOMETRICAL PROGRESSION, how far may this prin- 
ciple be introduced into economic computations, 83, 84. 

GEORGE, HENRY, his work, " Progress and Poverty," the 
interest aroused by it in England, 6-9 ; his economic 
position reviewed, 141-181 ; his economic errors how 



INDEX. 225 

far explained "by the errors of tlie current political econ- 
omy, respecting the coincidence of individual interest 
with the general good, 194-196. 

GOVEENMENT, as the proprietor of land, may, by estab- 
lishing a land monopoly, exact a rent in excess of the 
Eicardian formula, 41, 42 ; Mr. Mill and Mr. George 
propose that Government shall assume the ownership 
of the soil, chap. iii. 

GEAIN, cost of transportation from America to England, 116. 

IMPEOYEMEN'TS AISTD INVENTION'S, Mr. George's view 
of their relation to rent, 151-153 ; this view examined, 
162-181 ; Mr. Mill's statement of the effect of strictly 
agricultural improvements upon rent, 177-181. 

IMPEOVEMENTS OF THE SOIL, how compensated, 32- 
37, 82-85. 

INFEEIOE SOILS, are they settled first ? 89-108. 

INTEEEST ON LANDED IMPEOVEMENTS, how related 
to rent, 32-37, 76-88, 111, 112 ; Mr. George's view 
that none of the gain accruing from improvements, in 
production or exchange, goes to the capitalist in en- 
hanced interest, but that this gain is wholly absorbed 
by rent, 145-188. 

INTEEEST, COMPOUND. See Compound Interest. 

INTEEEST, SELF. See Sele-Interest. 

INVENTIONS AND IMPEOVEMENTS. See Improve- 
ments, etc. 

lEELAND, rents there approach and even exceed the eco- 
nomic maximum, 43, 60, 51. 

JEVONS, PEOF. W. STANLEY, his proposition that "the 
wages of a laboring man are ultimately coincident with 
15 



226 INDEX. 

what he produces, after the deduction of rent, taxes, 
and the interest of capital," 144, 145 ; the operation of 
individual interest is not always consistent with the gen- 
eral good, 194. 
JOHNSTON, PEOF. J. F. W., his notes on North America, 
46 n. ; " rich land for a rich man may be poor land for 
a poor man," 101. 

KEELEY MOTOR, its success all that is lacking to effect a 
complete refutation of Ricardo's doctrine, 120. 

LABOR vs. LAND, Mr. George's view that all labor-saving 
improvements and machinery expend their entire force 
in enhancing the demand for land, and thus increase 
rents while wages do not advance, 154, 155 ; this view 
examined, 167-181. 

LABORER, THE AGRICULTURAL, not concerned in the 
payment of rent, 27-31. 

LAND, of varying degrees of fertility, 10, 11, 21 ; the no- 
rent lands, 11, 12, 24, 29, 33, 34, 52, 53, 73-75 ; the 
question of individual or common ownership, chap. iii. ; 
the best holding of the land, chap, iv. 

LAVELEYE, PROF. :&MILE DE, rack rents in Belgium, 
44 ; his view of the Cultivating Communities of the 
Middle Ages, 137 ; he declares that the increase of cap- 
ital is greater than that of ground rents, 168, 169. 

LEROY-BEAULIEU, PAUL, his attack upon the economic 
doctrine of rent, 109-120; estimates the comparative 
advantages of large and of small farms, 205-207. 

LESLIE, PROF. CLIFFE, the influence of small holdings 
upon population, 214, 215. 



INDEX. 227 

MAINE, SIE HEITEY, competitive rents a thing of 
recent origin, 50 n. ; rack rent, 51 n. ; inefficiency of 
communal cultivation, 138. 

MALTHUS, T. R., Ms statement of the law of rent, 32 ; 
relation of his law of population to the economic doc- 
trine of rent, 93, 94 ; Mr. George attacks his law of 
population, 145, 150. 

MARGIN OF CULTIVATION, so-called, as controlling 
rents, 24, 25, 53-55, 92, 95, 96 ; Mr. George's distinc- 
tion between the necessary and the actual margin, 
155, 156. 

MARRIAGE, how influenced by peasant proprietorship, 
212-216. 

McCULLOCH, J. R., the range of productiveness among 
cultivated lands, 11. 

MILL, JOHN STUART, the means by which the produce 
of any given tract may be increased, 15 n. ; his plan 
for nationalizing the soil, and securing to the State 
the progressive increment in its value, 121-130 ; its 
feasibility considered, 130-141 ; his statement of the 
effect of agricultural improvements upon rent, 177- 
181 ; the influence of peasant prox^rietorship upon 
frugality, 211, 212. 

MINIMUM, THE ECONOMIC, to be treated as nil, 12. 

MOBILITY OF LABOR, as related to rent, 43-51. 

MONOPOLY OF LAND, how it may be established, and 
its effects on rent, 38-42. 

NATURAL ADVANTAGES OF THE SOIL, these 
alone, and not improvements effected by capital and 
labor, command rent, in the proper sense of the 
term, 32-37, cf. 109. 



228 INDEX. 

NATURAL RIGHTS, as concerned with the private hold- 
ing of land, 141, 142. 

NEWMARCH, WILLIAM, the diflaculty of classifying 
landed improvements, 133 w. 

NO-RENT LANDS, 11, 12, 24, 29, 33, 34, 52, 53, 73-75. 

OHIO, THE STATE OF, in what order were its lands 

occupied ? 98-106. 
OPINION, PUBLIC, as influencing rents, 49, 50. 

PANICS, attributed by Mr. George to the private ownership 
of land, 155, 156. 

PARTIBLE SUCCESSION, the law of, 213. 

PEASANT PROPRIETORSHIP, its advantages and dis- 
advantages, 201-219. 

PELL, ALFRED, the cost of transporting live cattle from 
America to Europe, 115 ii. 

POPULATION, how related to rent, 12-21, 93-96 ; Mr. 
George's view, that land, being held as private prop- 
erty, would produce in a stationary population all the 
effects attributed by the Malthusian doctrine to pres- 
sure of population, 150 ; how related to the tenure of 
the soil, 212-216. 

PRICE, NORMAL, how determined, 27, 28. 

PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND, involved in the 
economic doctrine of rent, 38-42 ; a comparatively 
modern institution, 128, 129 ; its rightfulness and expe- 
diency denied by Mr. Mill, 121-141 ; by Mr. George, 
141-181 ; admitted by Professors Roscher and Cairnes 
to-be only justified by public policy, 198-200. 

PRODUCTION OF WEALTH, how influenced by the 
tenure of the soil, 200-207. 



INDEX. 229 

PKOFITS, Mr. George's proposition that none of the gain 
accruing from improvements in production or exchange 
goes to the employer of labor, in enhanced profits, that 
gain being wholly absorbed by rent, 145-188. 

PKOGRESS, so-called, indissolubly associated, in Mr. 
George's theory, with poverty, 151, 152, 159, 160, 194- 
196 ; the socialist and the protectionist view of the 
same subject, 188-190. 

" PROGRESS AITD POVERTY," Mr. George's work under 
this title, 6-9, 141-181. 

PROPERTY, WHY AND HOW FAR "SACRED"? Mr. 
Mill's view, 122-127 ; Mr. George's view, 149-161 ; Pro- 
fessor Cairnes' and Professor Roscher's view, 198-200. 

PROTECTION", a means of limiting the extension of the 
division of labor, 189, 190. 

PROTECTIONISTS, their view of the influence of the 
aggregation of capital and the subdivision of labor, 
upon the condition of society, 189, 190. 

QUARTERLY REVIEW, LONDON, references to Mr. 
George's "Progress and Poverty," 7, 8. 

RENT, its importance in the distribution of Avealth, the 
subject of active discussion at the present time, 5, 6, 
55, 56, 145, 188 ; origin and progress of rent illus- 
trated, 9-21 ; the economic law of rent, 21 ; qualifica- 
tions of this doctrine, 21-26 ; rent does not form a 
part of the price of agricultural produce, nor is it de- 
ducted from wages, 26-31 ; the economic doctrine of 
rent relates only to compensation for the natural ad- 
vantages of the soil, 32-35 ; distinction between rent 
proper and interest on landed improvements, 35-37 ; 
the assumptions which underlie the economic doctrine of 



230 INDEX. 

rent, 38-53 ; rents governed by tlie margin of culti- 
vation, 53-55, 95, 96 ; attacks on the economic doc- 
trine of rent, chap. ii. ; Mr. Mill's and Mr. George's 
proposals to confiscate rent by taxation, chap. iii. ; 
Mr. George's proposition that all the gain accruing 
from improvements in production or exchange go to 
enhance rents, neither interest nor wages being ad- 
vanced in consequence, 145-181. 

EICAEDO, DAYID, why rent is paid, 29 n., 53; his 
relation to the economic doctrine of rent, 31, 32 ; are 
there any no-rent lands ? 7d n. ; his view of the his- 
torical order of settlement, as between good and in- 
ferior soils, 91, 92 ; what Mr. Eicardo would be likely 
to think about rent now, 119, 120. 

EIGHTS OF MAN, Mr. George's view concerning, 141, 142. 

EOGEES, PEOF. J. E. THOEOLD, rents in England, 
below the economic maximum, 48. 

EOSCHEE, PEOF. WILLIAM., his view of Mr. Carey's 
historical order of settlement, 90 ; private property in 
land only to be justified by public policy, 198, 199 ; his 
view of the best holding of the land, 218. 

SANITAEY EEGULATIONS justified by economic prin- 

ciples, 190, 191. 
SELF-INTEEEST, its normal operation among owners of 

land, 12, 21, 48, 50, 51, 91, 92 ; how far the operation of 

self-interest is coincident with the general good, 191-194. 
SENTIMENTS, MOEAL, as influencing rents, 47-51. 
SEEVICES, the equivocal character of this word, as used 

by Bastiat, 59-64. 
SETTLEMENT OF LAND, Mr. Carey's alleged historical 

order, and the argument derived therefrom against the 

economic doctrine of rent, 89-108. 



INDEX. 231 

SISMOITDI, M., influence of peasant proprietorship upon 
frugality, 210 ; upon restraint of population, 212, 214. 

SMITH, ADAM, his error in supposing that rent enters 
into the price of agricultural produce, 27 n. ; are there 
any no-rent lands ? 73 n. 

SOCIALISTS, their view of the influence of the aggregation 
of capital and the subdivision of labor upon the 
condition of society, 188. 

SOCIAL LABOE, how far the cause of rent, 68, 124-126. 

SPECULATION IN LAND, Mr. George attributes to it 
great industrial evils, 155-158 ; this view examined, 
162-166. 

STATE, the, Mr. Mill and Mr. George propose that the 
State shall become the owner of the soil, chap. iii. ; 
what shall the State do to prevent the evils likely to 
attend the wide extension of the principle of the divi- 
sion of labor ? 188-191, 219, 220. 

SUPEEIOR SOILS, are they settled after inferior soils ? 
89-108. 

SURFACE, REGULARITY OF, its relation to rent, 22. 

TAXATION OF RENT, SPECIAL, proposed by Mr. Mill, 
124-127 ; by Mr. George, 160. 

TENANT, the, rent a question between him and the land- 
lord only, 27-31. 

TENANTS making improvements on leased land, 84, 85. 

TENURE OF THE LAND, THE BEST, chap. iv. 

TIMES, THE LONDON, quoted concerning the advance 
in the condition of the French people, 215, 216. 

TRANSPORTATION, its relation to rent, 22-26; M. 
Leroy-Beaulieu's view of recent and prospective reduc- 
tions in its cost, 113-120 ; effect of improvements in 
transportation upon rents, 176, 177. 



232 INDEX. 

UlTEAENED mCREMET^T OF LAND, Mr. Mill's 
statement of its origin, 121-128. 

UNEXHAUSTED IMPROVEMENTS, tlieir relation to 
rent, 51-53, 76-88. 

UNITED STATES, influence of our competition upon 
English rents, 25, 26, 115-117 ; rents here approach 
the economic maximum, 44-48 ; the characteristics of 
our agriculture, 45-47 ; in what order were our lands 
settled, as between good and inferior soils ? 98-108 ; 
productiveness of our agriculture, compared with that 
of England, 202. 

VALUE, M. Bastiat attributes all value to "service," 

58-65. 
VILLAGE COMMUNITIES, their cultivation of the soil, 

128, 137, 138. 

WAGES, not reduced by the payment of rent, 29, 30 ; 
are they "produced by the labor for which they are 
paid"? 143-145; Mr. George's proposition that none 
of the gain accruing through improvements in produc- 
tion or exchange goes to increase wages, all that gain 
being absorbed by rent, 145-181. 

WAGNER, PROF. ADOLPH, his recommendation that 
municipalities acquire all city real estate, in order to 
secure the progressive advance in its value, 138, 139. 

WASTE OF THE SOIL, its relation to rent, 12, 51-53 ; 
not influential with reference to the rent of building 
sites, 138, 139. 

WEST, SIR EDWARD, his announcement "of the law of 
rent, 32. 

WRIGHT, C. D., his report on the Factory System, 197 n. 




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